New Cities Added to Google StreetView

Early this morning, Google announced they’ve added Street View imagery for 8 cities (23 totaly cities currently covered). The 8 new cities are Boston, Dallas, Fort Worth, Indianapolis, Minneapolis, St. Paul, Detroit, and Providence. The pace at which cities are being added is pretty impressive — 6 cities were added in October. At the current rate, we’ll see another 6-8 cities added in February sometime (I’m hoping Seattle will be in the next batch). You can learn more about StreetView here.

I find myself agreeing with Joel Burslem on two fronts — the killer part of this release is the “embeddable panoramas” and his advice that brokers figure out how to utilize this technology.

Here’s some nice imagery on Wabasha St in St Paul, MN that I found (totally randomly). There are details as to how to embed a panorama over at Google LatLong.

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Joel’s advice for brokers was “begin to think of ways you could automate this feature for all your listings.” If your brokerage is located in one of the 23 cities covered, it seems a capable web developer could integrate Street Views into your listing detail pages to allow a potential home buyer interested in your property to “walk down the street” to get a feel for the neighborhood. For the agents following Todd’s advice to blog about your listings (and you live in one of the 23 cities), I’d recommend embedding panoramas in every post focused on a specific listing.

The verdict isn’t in yet, but I think internet-savvy home buyers are going to find this imagery extremely valuable in their home search. What do you think are the best ways to integrate this imagery into your website or blog?