Apple Maps Could Launch With More Business Listings Than Google

If the two companies’ self-reported numbers are accurate, and if nothing changes between now and then, Apple’s new Maps product will launch later this year with more local business listings than Google.

As Bloomberg points out, during Apple’s announcement on Monday, the company said it has “ingested” more than 100 million business listings around the world via its various data partnerships. As our Greg Sterling has pointed out on his own blog, Apple’s primary local business data providers appear to be Localeze, Acxiom and TomTom. (What appears to be a full list of Apple’s sources is listed here.)

Meanwhile, when Google announced its new Google+ Local Pages a couple weeks ago, Marissa Mayer said — and a Google spokesperson confirmed to Bloomberg — that Google has 80 million local business listings. That’s 20 percent less than the number that Apple claims it’ll have when iOS6 arrives later this year.

Of course, Google could do something to narrow or eliminate the difference between now and then.

Back in the first half of last decade, Google and Yahoo used to regularly try to one-up the other with grand proclamations about who had the bigger index of web pages/documents. Don’t be surprised if, much like those days, Google and Apple race to have the most local business listings and trade claims over whose local search index is biggest.