Google is putting a new ‘community feed’ front and center in Maps for Android, iOS

Abner Li | Dec 1 2020 - 10:45 am PT

Over the past few years, Google has been growing a mostly food-centric social network inside its mapping application. Google Maps is now elevating that focus even further with a community feed.

The “Explore” tab is the primary screen people interact with in Google Maps. A tap of the bottom bar icon slides up a sheet with popular places and other information about the neighborhood currently being viewed.

This is now becoming the “community feed” where Maps will surface “updates and recommendations from trusted local sources.” It’s meant to highlight the 20 million ratings/reviews, photos, updates, answers, and other contributions that Google receives every day.

The feed shows you the latest reviews, photos and posts added to Google Maps by local experts and people you follow as well as food and drink merchants, and articles from publishers like The Infatuation.

Content that appears here is tailored to your “selected interests.” These posts can be liked, and you can follow other users and businesses for updates.

In early testing of the community feed, we saw that posts from merchants are seen two times more than before the feed existed. So now more people can see if a local business is offering a new service, has a limited time specialty or opened outdoor seating.

The Google Maps community feed is rolling out globally for Android and iOS today.