Brady Forrest at O’Reilly Radar reports on Google’s GPS-based “crowdsourcing” strategy to get local data on Maps outside the US (specifically in India). While Google has enormous amounts of data for the US and EU, in selected countries there’s much less data to plot on Maps. Accordingly Google is relying on users (e.g., My Maps) to create the data that forms the bulk of the content in certain countries.

While Google didn’t share specific numbers, they told me they’ve been surprised by the volume and quality of user-created maps and data being uploaded.

Related Topics: Google: Maps & Local | Google: Outside US

About The Author: Greg Sterling is a Contributing Editor at Search Engine Land. He writes a personal blog Screenwerk, about SoLoMo issues and connecting the dots between online and offline. He also posts at Internet2Go, which is focused on the mobile Internet. Follow him @gsterling. See more articles by Greg Sterling