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Yahoo India has introduced a new feature offering driving directions and community search on its existing Yahoo India Maps. It is a user-friendly option for Internet surfers to search locations. The maps offer landmarks and routes.

Yahoo India Maps (beta) was launched in April 2007 and is a Web 2.0 product built out of Yahoo’s Research & Development Centre in Bangalore.

Yahoo claims that the new feature will allow users to search or directions between 179 cities, 4767 towns, and 226114 villages. Users can even search nearly about 3 million points of interest marked by Internet users from around the web.

Yahoo India Maps now provide landmarks along the route, the count of roads between turns and the areas that users enter and leave. Apart from calculating the distance and time taken for travel, the instruction set also takes care of One Ways and even Auto Rickshaw fares in major cities.

“At Yahoo India R&D, we are constantly innovating to develop product and services that make the lives of our users easier. Driving directions & Community Search will make Yahoo India maps more compelling and deepen our engagement with users,” said Mr. Sharad Sharma, Chief Executive Officer, Yahoo India, R&D.

Yahoo is also offering a facility to send these Driving Directions to their mobile phones as an SMS. Users can pan and zoom the map and if they have any doubt, they can right click and ask for directions.

With Yahoo India Maps, one can now search for localities, cities, towns and villages. It also contains satellite imagery for large parts of the country.

Apart from looking for locations, users can also find information about various points of interest such as ATMs, Petrol Pumps, Restaurants, places of historical interest etc.