Google Maps Traffic Estimates Even For Many Roads

Any person who knows their neighborhood well, knows which streets to avoid when driving around town. But for those who are just visiting or passing through, getting stuck on a bad road can be a costly mistake.

Google has added estimated traffic predictions by day and time for even some of the most basic roads. For example, here is looking at the Gramercy Park area of New York City on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday at noon. I’ve made an animated GIF to show how the traffic changes by day even at the same time of the day:

Google said this feature is now available today on most road level views. This was expanded from Google adding it to highway traffic.

To try this yourself, type in your starting and ending points to get directions in Google Maps (or just go to a location in Google Maps), enable the traffic layer on the upper right hand side of the viewport, and then click “change” in the legend to switch from live traffic to Typical Traffic for these roads.

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About The Author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here.