Look, Google Maps is fine. It’s arguably even great—probably one of the most-opened apps on lots of our phones and absolutely one of the most indispensable.
But for as good as Google Maps can be when it comes to helping us navigate the physical world, there are places where it and its big-name contemporaries all fall short—and where smaller third-party services are picking up the slack and cooking up creative new mapping-related capabilities. These additions go above and beyond what Google gives us, and while they won’t outright replace Google Maps in your go-to app collection, they’ll supplement it in some really interesting ways.
Here are five next-level, location-related enhancements well worth your while to explore.
1. The cream-of-the-crop detector
Google Maps holds oceans of opinions about restaurants, businesses, and all sorts of other attractions around the world. But actually inspecting that info and figuring out which places are the best to visit isn’t exactly easy.
That’s where a resource called Top Rated comes into play. Top Rated takes the firehose of location reviewing data from Google Maps and remixes it into a simple-as-can-be website where you can search for any city—or just look around your current location, if you’d rather—and see the most favorably reviewed places for that specific spot.
You can specify any maximum distance you want and then browse either the best-ranked places across the board or favorite finds within narrowed categories like food and drink, entertainment, and shopping. You can even explore hidden gems and recently discovered standouts, if you really want to get off the beaten path.
Top Rated is completely free, and it doesn’t require sign-ins or any manner of personal data to be shared.
2. The Wikipedia-Maps mashup
From the best places in the world to the most noteworthy places around you, our second Google-Maps-supplementing treasure is a site that puts you in the center of a map with Wikipedia data all around you.
NearbyWiki does one thing and does it well: It ingests mountains of place-oriented info from Wikipedia and puts it into a traditional map form, so you can explore it.
All you do is enter a specific spot into the site’s search function—or let it detect your current location automatically—and poof: You’ll see an interactive map of the area with special pins showing every place around you that’s associated with a Wikipedia entry.
You can click or tap on any of those pins to see a pop-up with more info. You can then read the entire associated Wikipedia listing right then and there, atop the map, if you want—which makes for an easy way to discover fascinating facts about the places around you and also find new noteworthy nearby locations to explore. On that note, NearbyWiki allows you to open any location directly in Google Maps for instant navigation, too, if you end up seeing somewhere you want to go.
It’s a whole new way to wander around Wikipedia in the real world—and, just like our first Maps-expanding find, it’s 100% free, without any sign-ins or data-sharing required.
3. The public transit pro
Google Maps has gotten much better about supporting public transit over the years, but an app called Citymapper takes driving-free planning to a whole new level.
Just open up the Citymapper website—or hop into the dedicated Android or iOS app, if you’d rather—and put in any starting and ending location you need. In the blink of an eye, Citymapper will analyze all the possible public transportation options and show you a shockingly thorough list of possible paths for getting from Point A to Point B with optimal cost, time, and even environmental efficiency.
Citymapper includes buses, trains, cabs and rideshares, and even rental scooters and bikes. You can mix and match those options and see real-time data about routes and stops to select the best possible approach for your purpose.
Citymapper is free and ad-supported, and it doesn’t require any accounts or personal info-sharing.
4. Your personal mapmaker
The next time you need to share a specific series of physical locations with someone, find your way to a spectacular service called PamPam.
PamPam empowers you to create your own custom maps—like one showing every location of a particular company’s offices around the world, a collection of possible spots for an upcoming event, or even just a breakdown of your favorite restaurants or haberdasheries within a certain city.
You can create custom maps by searching for or pasting in specific business names or addresses directly into the PamPam website, or you can import an existing list from a spreadsheet or even a Google Maps collection to get going. However you go about it, PamPam will quickly put together a tidy, user-friendly, and sharing-ready map that shows every last spot you mention—with custom AI-generated descriptions for each and every one.
And speaking of AI, PamPam can also help you find places to fit into any theme, if you don’t already have a list of your own—via prompts like “The best business lunch spots in Chicago.”
The service is free with reasonably generous restrictions for personal use. If you’re using the service for professional purposes, you can lift those limits with plans starting at $12 a month.
You do have to sign into PamPam with a Google account before you can make your own maps, but the service doesn’t require any personal info beyond that and doesn’t do anything disconcerting with the limited amount of data it collects.
5. Your friendly tour guide
Last but not least in our list is a clever new service that could really be useful in the right sort of situation.
It’s called VoiceMap, and it’s an immersive, on-demand audio tour guide for hundreds of places around the world—with insights recorded by actual human experts and made available for your enjoyment.
So, for instance, you could get a guide to Hollywood Boulevard’s “haunting history and hidden gems” and listen to a 60-minute tour that takes you on a specific walking journey and points out fascinating facts along the way. You could take a two-mile walking tour of London’s West End with Sir Ian McKellen. Or you could stroll through the scenes of Romeo and Juliet with a detailed guide to the sights and sounds of Verona.
Some of VoiceMaps tours are free. Others cost anywhere from a couple of bucks to $10 and up. (You do need to create an account to participate.) With any tour you take, though, you can listen as many times as you like online or off via the VoiceMap website as well as the Android and iOS apps.
Keep the metaphorical coordinates to this and the other gems we just went over handy, and you’ll have an exceptionally elevated mapping experience—going far beyond what Google Maps alone could give you.
Love off-the-beaten-path discoveries like these? Get a useful new treasure in your inbox every Wednesday with my free Cool Tools newsletter from The Intelligence.
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