Talking to Google Maps is an example one of the A.I. innovations that could become increasingly popular in the coming years. That is, using A.I. as a backseat driver offering on-demand navigational guidance that goes beyond the usual heuristical route-mapping.
The Five Most-Key Takeaways from This Blog Post
- Business owners can benefit here as the A.I. could readily identify businesses in an area that a driver may ask about.
- Example: someone on a road trip asking the G.P.S. A.I. about local restaurants and shops in a city to take a rest stop in. Likewise, identifying hotels or auto shops a certain distance away.
- For solo drivers, this could cut down on handling the phone while driving, potentially lowering risk of phone-related accidents.
- Of course, you do not need to be driving to benefit from this feature. Many people use maps apps to discover businesses in their area, so conversing with the app to learn more about certain establishments can be helpful.
- Businesses will benefit from updating the website and maps-app profiles so that the A.I. will have access to up-to-date information.
The Significance for Business Owners
Business owners by now should be well aware that not having an internet presence severely hobbles their chances of success.
However, sometimes it is easy to underestimate the importance of map apps.
What A.I. is doing is allowing for users to get more and more information about a business via conversational computing.
Businesses can benefit here by making sure that the A.I. has plenty of information to pull from.
So, a prudent business owner’s reaction to this news should be to imagine what a customer may be asking about the business. Making sure the website and especially the map-app profile has the relevant information will be essential.
Updating the profile will be helpful, as some map apps allow for quite a bit of information, such as menu items for restaurants.
Map Apps Are Here to Stay
As the Silicon Valley lore goes, in the mid 1990s the brothers Musk, Elon and Kimbal, pitched a Yellow Pages executive on the idea of—get this—putting the Yellow Pages online.
And that executive, in a moment that must have ultra-HD 20/20 clarity in memory’s hindsight, hurled a physical Yellow Pages phonebook at Kimbal, astounded into rage by the very suggestion that anything could ever replace a phonebook as a place to find businesses in your area.
Well, the Dotcom bubble indeed boomed enough to solidify the Musk’s Zip2, which served as an online repository of information on businesses, with maps included.
Now, we have detailed maps that users can scroll through, like globes that businesses can add pins advertising the business on.
People will pretty much always want to know about what is going on in their area, hence the lasting popularity of map apps. Whether it is a twisty turny road trip to a city you have never been to before, or looking up the hours of operation of a new local restaurant, these map apps are ever-present in people’s digital lives.
So, A.I.’s additions to map apps will only increase our dependency on these apps to help us navigate the world and quickly learn about what is out there.
The Last (But Not Least) Key Takeaway from This Blog Post
Make sure you are doing to maximum you can on map-app profiles so that conversational A.I. will be able to draw from trustworthy information on your business.
Keeping up to date on business hours, menu items, and customer reviews will all help business owners stay ahead as A.I. takes much of the searching out of the hands of the viewers, instead collating information on businesses that the A.I. then relays to the user in a summary form.
Other Great GO AI Blog Posts
GO AI the blog offers a combination of information about, analysis of, and editorializing on A.I. technologies of interest to business owners, with especial focus on the impact this tech will have on commerce as a whole.
On a usual week, there are multiple GO AI blog posts going out. Here are some notable recent articles:
- For Businesses and Other Organizations, What Makes a Successful Chatbot?
- IBM Watson vs. ChatGPT vs. Gemini: How Will Each Affect Search Engines?
- Using A.I. to Find Resources for Business Owners
- How Would Restricting Open-Source A.I. Affect Business Owners?
- The EU’s A.I. Act Has Become Law: The Implications for Business Owners (Especially American)
In addition to our GO AI blog, we also have a blog that offers important updates in the world of search engine optimization (SEO), with blog posts like “Google Ends Its Plan to End Third-Party Cookies”.
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