Now You Can Google Your Maps

Let me start out by saying this is the 100th post on The Programming Consultant Newsletter. It seems like I should have some sort of fanfare or general celebration in this post, but I’m not sure how one really does celebration and fanfare in a blog. Perhaps bold type will help.

This is the 100th post. Thank you for reading. Yipee.

Now, on to the post.

You know it had to be coming. Google Earth now allows you to search the world’s KML (Keyhole Markup Language - the format you put your data in for display in Google Earth) files. Simply type in your search terms, and a Web Results folder will appear with KML files you can load from the Internet.

This is a really cool thing. You can share your KML files on your web site, and anybody doing a search from Google Earth that hits on something in your KML will see the search result and be able to zoom in to your map.

You do need to create a sitemap.xml file and place it in your web server’s root folder so the Google bots can know where to search and what to include. You can find directions on creating your sitemap.xml file here.