The Last Breath of Mapquest

Remember Mapquest? The mapping service used to be the defacto standard for end-users seeking directions and companies offering directions to their physical locations for years. Mapquest may be nearing extinction though as Google will be releasing a new feature next week that will let website owners embed a Google map into their website (or blog).

Via News.com, "To embed a Google Map, users will simply pull up the map they want to embed--it can be a location, a business, series of driving directions, or a My Map they have created--and then click 'Link to this page' and copy and paste the HTML into their Web site or blog," according to a Google spokeswoman.

The maps apparently will be fully interactive, letting users drag, click and zoom in on a location. While webmasters could have taken a screen shot in the past and simply included it on their page, the interactivity of the embedded maps will be a game changer. If you every wanted to know how to grow your business, take a page from the Google playbook, and give other Webmasters something, anything, that will encourage a link back to you - just like this.

So long MapQuest.