Yandex.Maps is now in Turkey with Panoramas!

by Fırat Demirel on November 15, 2011

Yandex entered into the Turkish search engine market as a new player but brought along many services, as well. One of the most important ones among these has been the map services by Yandex and now Yandex.Maps is in Turkey. Today at 14:50, Yandex Turkey is going to be introduced with a presentation at Webrazzi Summit but we are sharing the details in advance.

Russian service provider will be providing Turkish users with a country map, street view (panorama), satellite view and the updated traffic news. Harita.yandex.com.tr is the address of the Yandex.Maps service where you can find the maps and satellite views of 81 provinces, 947 districts and 40 thousand villages/quarters.

Resembling Google Maps, the map service of Google, and providing an easy usage, Yandex.Maps will also be ready for Turkey on popular mobile platforms very soon.

Panoramas and Shooting Method

Yandex Panoramas, which works just as Google’s Street View does; consists of the street shots taken by Yandex in İstanbul (3.205 km of roads, 447.812 photos, 111.953 panoramas) and Ankara ((1.706 km roads, 187.972 photos, 46.993 panoramas). Beside the street shots, Yandex has also taken images of Marmara Sea as well as some special locations (which you might guess about) and 360 degrees of special shots.

If you have recently seen a car with a camera passing outside your house (in İstanbul and Ankara), this was probably a Yandex car. To be honest, we could not see the car, either but apparently Yandex took great shots around our office, as well

The cars, which we found out to have a compass, a GPS and a resolution of minimum 10 megapixels, started to work at early hours on bright sunny days when the roads were empty. In narrow streets where it was impossible to go through with a car, they used bicycles with cameras or shot with hand cameras and the photos were combined into 360-degree-panoramic views. 4 different resolutions were used when uploading so as to let faster photo viewing.

The photos were combined automatically in accordance with geographical coordinates and the plates and faces were blurred (as per the law).

Yandex.Traffic and Data Resources

This is one of the features of Yandex.Maps which will be most used in İstanbul. Yandex.Traffic will calculate the average index of traffic density and show the traffic data in green, red and yellow. Traffic density index is a rating system between 0-10, 0 being clear and 10 being highly dense. For example, if the traffic density index is 7, Yandex tell us that the trip will last twice as long as it does at clear times.

Yandex Turkey shares the details of this service,too. We find out that this traffic data is provided by the GPS-equipped cars of the companies which aim to become partners with the service and great vehicle fleets. The coordinates, speed and directions info of these cars are communicated to Yandex.Traffic server and the most updated traffic info is compiled. As a result, the movement graph of the car is created by the analysis program of the system depending on the data acquired.

Yandex states that this service also abides by the confidentiality procedures (keeping the info about the car, the car owner or the driver confidential).

The Java and Android applications of Yandex.Traffic will soon be available for your mobile device on haritalar.yandex.com.tr. There is not an iPhone application yet (it will be available soon, though) for Yandex.Traffic and time will show if it will be able to compete with İBB Trafik but considering the fact that Java-based telephones are quite common in Turkey and the number of smartphone users is increasing each day, I reckon that Yandex.Traffic will gain popularity as Yandex grows.

As for the effect of Maps services on the organic search rate of Yandex, we have to wait and see what will happen.

via Yandex.Maps is now in Turkey with Panoramas! | Webrazzi Global.