Google Maps will tell you how hard it will be to find parking

Google announced that the new version of the Google Maps Android app will now tell you how difficult it is to find parking at your destination. This is based on predictive data, similar to how Google calculates popular times for venues.

Google added this parking difficulty icon for 25 metro areas throughout the US. This is aimed at giving you a heads-up on how much more time you need to plan to get to your destination to include time for parking.

Here is a picture that shows you the parking icon in red at the bottom, showing “limited” parking.

This is available in the following metro areas; San Francisco, Seattle, Miami, Atlanta, Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, Minneapolis/St. Paul, New York City, Orlando, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, San Diego, St. Louis, Tampa, Washington, DC, Cleveland, Dallas/Fort Worth, Denver, Houston, Phoenix, Portland and Sacramento.

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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.