Online coupons have been around for many years, at least a decade. Despite this no publisher or site has arisen to yet win the space. There’s no Facebook of coupons, no Twitter of coupons and, dare I say it, no Google of coupons. Google itself would seem to have missed or mishandled the opportunity with its peek-a-boo approach to local coupons.

Yet coupons and deals have become progressively hotter during the recession. And now there are a growing number of sites online and in mobile that promise access to offers and savings. Sensing a differentiating opportunity, Ask is today launching a deals vertical (”Ask Deals“) within search that seeks to be that comprehensive source of coupons and offers from a wide range of sources.

Ask is largely crawling for the data and said the following in its press release about the scope of Deals at launch:

Ask Deals, its proprietary database of more than 1 million high-quality savings offers from national and local merchants across hundreds of product categories.

Ask Deals scours the Web for all the deals available online – from savings on ‘skinny jeans’ to restaurant coupons – and organizes the best money-saving offers front and center on the results page, eliminating the need for consumers to search multiple sites or multiple coupon sites or search engine links to find their answer. The Ask Deals database is continuously refreshed and editorially refined, giving consumers the most up-to-date and highest-quality savings offers every time they search on Ask.

Each of the major search engines now plays to some degree in the deals and coupons space. Yahoo has recently made a bigger push, while Google has seemingly neglected the coupon opportunity.

Microsoft offers an excellent travel vertical in Bing Travel (with price predictions and alerts) and provides cash back within shopping. The company also acquired the assets of local coupon platform Zixxo some time ago. And AOL, for its part, has one of the most interesting of the various deal/coupon initiatives in the little-known Shortcuts, which ties online CPG and grocery coupons to offline loyalty cards.

If you go into the iTunes app store you’ll find something like 30 apps that respond to the query “coupons.” Clearly this is an area that is growing and will be perennially popular.

To rise above the increasing number of sites and corresponding noise, Ask is betting on comprehensiveness, based on its ability to crawl the Internet and deliver a more effective and efficient search-driven user experience. I wasn’t able to try it out extensively before launch but my initial impressions are largely positive.

As Google Maps continues to roll out new features that competing map services don’t have, web users are rewarding it with big gains in traffic. A recent analyst report says Google is the number one maps site in terms of features and usability, and new Hitwise.com traffic data just shared this week with Search Engine Land shows Google Maps pulling much closer to category leader MapQuest.

In a report issued this week, the boutique investment bank Cowen and Company says Google is the clear leader with the most user-friendly features among the four major mapping sites. “Google Maps has meaningfully expanded its lead in features and functionality over its competitors,” Cowen analysts say in their report.

As for those three competitors, the Cowen report isn’t very kind: “Since our initial survey in July 2007, innovation at MapQuest (AOL) and Yahoo Maps has stagnated. Microsoft Live Search Maps, which is the least popular of the four, ranks a distant second, but has launched a couple unique features over the past two years.”

The report includes a case study using all four mapping sites to get directions using the phrase, [South Orange community center to Yankee Stadium]. The report praises Google Maps for its “unified search box” because it converted the phrase into “Point A to Point B” directions while allowing the user to choose exact start/end points. The three other services, Cowen analysts say, all failed to provide such a user-friendly experience; Yahoo! Maps and Microsoft Live Search Maps were dinged for requiring the user to provide the exact address of the South Orange Community Center. The report’s analysis of MapQuest says “text and display ads clutter MapQuest pages to the point that it is difficult to find where to click to continue the process of getting directions.”

Google Maps also gets credit in the report for providing easy access to street-level photos, public transit directions, and other features:

Since our last report in July 2007, Google has added a number of unique new features, such as My Location, which pinpoints the location of mobile users to within around 500 meters using cell tower triangulation. In addition, Google has dramatically increased its database of street level imagery and public transportation directions; none of the other online maps sites offer ’street view’ or public transportation directions.

What About Market Share?

Innovation and user-friendly features aside, Google Maps remains second behind MapQuest in terms of market share — but is gaining ground quickly, according to new traffic data from Hitwise analyst Heather Hopkins.

The image above shows U.S. market share in the Travel-Maps category. Over the last nine months, Google Maps has seen a traffic increase of about 45%. Hitwise stats show Google currently having just over 32% market share among mapping sites. MapQuest, meanwhile, has fallen from above 50% to 44.4% market share at the moment — that’s down about 15% so far in 2008.

Longer trending of these same numbers can be seen by looking at Hitwise stats published earlier this year. At the start of 2007, Google Maps market share was only about 10%, a distant third behind MapQuest and Yahoo! Maps.

Stepping outside the Maps category to overall U.S. web traffic shows similar numbers:

The image above not only casts a wider net, but also shows combined numbers for Yahoo! Local and Yahoo! Maps, as well as combined numbers for MSN Live Local and Ask City (which uses Microsoft Virtual Earth mapping). Heather Hopkins shares more about these charts on the Hitwise blog today.

We’ve noted on Search Engine Land that two factors likely began to change the traffic trends for map sites: First, when Google stopped linking to MapQuest and Yahoo! Maps; second, when Google Maps began to be featured prominently in Universal Search results.

Cowen and Company expects this trend to continue, and to pave the way for success in mobile search: “Google’s aggressive investment in maps positions the company to achieve a dominant share of search in the mobile Internet.”

The LiveSide Blog reported that Chris Pendleton,Virtual Earth Evangelist, posted the news that Ask.com has now dropped their own mapping product for Microsoft’s Virtual Earth.

Virtual Earth can now be found on Ask Maps, Ask City, and within Ask’s search results as Smart Answers. It is a shame to see Ask.com dissolve the mapping service, but it really comes as no surprise to me as they continue to cut costs and outsource innovation to other companies.

Microsoft does have an excellent mapping product, which is used by YellowPages.com, Superpages.com, and WhitePages.com, amongst others.

Is this a global change to all Ask.com properties? I tried finding Ask.com’s Maps in the UK and I received a message that reads:

Dear Ask Maps user,

We are sorry, but our maps service is no longer available. Please re-enter your query in the search box above to use our main web search service.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you. If you have any comments or questions about our service please contact us.

The Ask Team

The mapping upgrades and improvements are coming so fast now from Google, Microsoft, MapQuest, and Yahoo that it’s difficult to keep track of all the changes. Luckily, the Ask Blog walks us through all the features of the new and improved Ask Maps UK, which includes multi-point routing, walking directions (which are claimed to be unique to Ask), aerial views, and incorporates landmarks, transit, and points of interest.

However, this isn’t a map-centric local search site, like Ask City in the US. A search for local information on the Ask UK Maps site (e.g., London Hotels) will send users to Ask.com search results.

FlashEarth Mashup with Google Earth 4.2 from the Google Earth Blog reports on a site named Flash Earth that provides mapping services from several providers in a desktop like experience, using Flash technologies.

Flash Earth gives you mapping data from Google Earth, Microsoft Virtual Earth, Yahoo Maps, OpenLayers and NASA Terra. The Flash map lets you select one of those maps and then you can click or drag the map to the location you want. You can also use arrow keys or the compass control to move the map to your desired location. You can rotate the map by turning your compass wheel with the click and drag. You can also zoom in and out by dragging the slide bar up or down, or pressing the plus or minus keys on the map or by using your mouse’s scroll wheel.

Postscript: Just remembered Gary pointed to a Ogle Earth story reporting that a similar service named Mobile GMaps received a cease and desist from Google Enforcement Team that they were violating their Terms of Service and had to thus stop using it.

Google goes back to pre-Katrina maps from USA Today reports that Google Maps has changed their satellite imagery of New Orleans to show pre-Katrina images, getting some local residents angry and wondering if there’s some type of cover-up in the works. However, it’s unclear if these are pre-Katrina images or not — and the situation’s just as confusing with mapping services from other search engines.

USA Today writes:

Google’s popular map portal has replaced post-Hurricane Katrina satellite imagery with pictures taken before the storm, leaving locals feeling like they’re in a time loop and even fueling suspicions of a conspiracy.

Scroll across the city and the Mississippi Gulf Coast, and everything is back to normal: Marinas are filled with boats, bridges are intact and parks are filled with healthy, full-bodied trees.

"Come on," said an incredulous Ruston Henry, president of the economic development association in New Orleans’ devastated Lower 9th Ward. "Just put in big bold this: ‘Google, don’t pull the wool over the world’s eyes. Let the truth shine.’"

Barry Schwartz and I thought we’d take a deeper look, to see what Google was doing compared to the other search engines. Since the Lower 9th Ward is mentioned, we looked at 1616 Caffin Ave, New Orleans, LA 70117, which is in that area. From what we can tell, Google’s not alone in showing pre-Katrina images.

Google Maps

This image from Google Maps (licensed from DigitalGlobe) shows plenty of homes, while the USA Today article says of the area:

Homes wiped off their foundations are miraculously back in place in the Lower 9th.

However, it’s not clear if no homes at all have been rebuilt since the disaster. In addition, if you zoom closer and pan left, you will notice that some of the roofs are dark and there appears to be dirt between the homes. So it does appear that Google is showing some post-Hurricane Katrina images.

Yahoo Maps

In this image from Yahoo Maps (licensed from Aerials Express), the area seems relatively OK, similar to what Google is showing. Unlike Google, zoom closer and pan left, and the view doesn’t change to suggest damage. It stays bright and green.

Microsoft Live

With Live Search Maps, the image (from the US Geological Survey) shows everything as gray, so it is hard to tell by the colors if there’s damage reflected or not.

[Postscript: Gary Price points me to TerraServer, Microsoft's other mapping service that pulls from USGS images. Here's the same area there. It's the same picture, as best I can tell -- and this time, you have a date: December 28, 2002].

Ask Maps

The Ask Maps image (licensed from DigitalGlobe’s GlobeXplorer) has a mix. Parts of the maps have post-Katrina images (and in fact, appear to be right after the storm) while others seem to be pre-Hurricane Katrina.

Overall

The USA Today article was sparked by new images released by Google. But as you can see, the other search engines may already have had older information covering the city as well. Or, it may be that some of these images are actually fresh, showing parts of the city where there’s been some rebuilding. It’s difficult for us to day, since we’re not familiar with the rebuilding efforts in various locations of New Orleans.

Certainly, many people turned to these maps immediately after the Katrina devastation to understand what happened. Google made special efforts to get updated images online, and it wasn’t alone. Many residents of New Orleans clearly feel forgotten or abandoned after the damage. Perhaps the search engines should consider keeping updated images of the area as a priority. That would certainly make it easier for progress — or lack of it — to stay foremost in everyone’s minds.

At the very least, this points out the need for images being show to be dated somehow, so people know exactly when they were shot. This isn’t the first time the issue has come up. Let’s get some dates out there, so the guesswork can stop.

Postscript: Google’s John Hanke, Director, Maps and Earth emailed this statement:

In order to publish the best data possible, we must take into account a combination of factors including imagery date, resolution, and clarity. The latest update from one of our information providers substantially improved the imagery detail of the New Orleans area. The detailed imagery was taken before Katrina.

We are working to update Google Earth with more current New Orleans imagery, and continue to make post-Katrina imagery available on a dedicated website.

Background

Immediately after Hurricane Katrina made landfall, Google Earth coordinated efforts with the United States coastal guard to get the most current data possible into our databases. Imagery from different agencies was collected on our servers in an effort to get representations of the devastated area that were in the highest quality available and more easily accessible to the public than ever before. As a result, teams of people formed across the country were able to analyze affected topographies using Google Earth, which significantly improved relief efforts.

To clarify further, I think the situation here is that Google may have gained more detailed — IE, more close-up coverage — of the general area. It sounds like they had to decide whether to use close-up information, while out-of-date, or stick with newer information that didn’t let you zoom in as much.

Of course, zooming in does make little sense if you’re zooming in on areas that are now completely different. I’ll check further on this, to confirm more.

Postscript Barry: Google Responds To Katrina Controversy With Fresh New Orleans Images.

Google Maps has caught up with Yahoo and Microsoft in adding live traffic reporting for the United States to their online mapping service.

Google Operating System spotted the change today (and Google now has the official word up here). To see the traffic yourself, just go to Google Maps and click on the new "Traffic" button that you’ll see in the upper right-hand corner of the map page, right before the "Map" and "Satellite" and "Hybrid" buttons.

Pushing that button will make traffic light icons show up, like this:

Everywhere you see an icon, that’s where you can get real-time traffic information.

Here is a screen capture of New York City traffic from Google Maps:

The green color symbolizes more than 50 miles per hour; the yellow color symbolizes 25-50 miles per hour; the red color symbolizes less than 25 miles per hour; and the gray color symbolizes that no data available.

Google is playing serious catch-up in adding this information to its mapping service. Yahoo began offering live traffic data for the United States on Yahoo Maps back on December 15, 2004, over two years ago.

To see traffic at Yahoo Map, zoom out to the US "country" level, then click on the "Live Traffic" button you’ll see at the top of the map. Places with traffic conditions being reported will appear. Unfortunately, Yahoo doesn’t appear to have more help information about getting real-time traffic that we can point you at.

Microsoft added live traffic on May 23, 2006. To see traffic at Microsoft Live Search Maps, zoom out to see the entire US, then click on the "Traffic" link above the map. Stoplight icons will appear where information is available.

Ask Maps now remains the only major search engine not to have life traffic data. But they do have walking directions, for those who find the traffic is too much!

How about live traffic on the move? Google has offered live traffic data on their mobile version of Google Maps since July 25, 2006, and Windows Live also has traffic on their mobile version. More on that in Danny’s recent post, Ironically, You Need A Map To Find Google & Microsoft’s Windows Mobile Map Apps. The latest version of Yahoo Go also appears to have live traffic info.