I have a bunch of maps on my computer. Does anyone know which one is the most current.
I live in southeastern PA.
Tell us what maps you have on your computer and maybe we will be able to answer your question.
Google Maps probably edges out Bing Maps because of a more devoted userbase feeding it info. Don’t use MapQuest.
The one with the date closest to the date in the bottom right of your screen.
The SDMB mind reader has been out of service for quite some time now.
Could you possibly provide some additional information?
I have a hobby which involves looking at maps of the same area in both Google and Bing Maps. I’m looking at certain places that have changed in the past few years and I know roughly what changed. If the two aren’t the same, which they often aren’t, then Google Maps is almost always more up to date than Bing. Every once in a while, Bing will be more up to date, but it’s really rare.
The OP needs to not only say what maps they’re comparing, but what information they’re interested in. One on-line map may have more up-to-date information about what businesses are open, but an older satellite image, for instance.
For folks really interested in this topic, we should differentiate the maps that displayed by various websites from the underlying geographic databases used to make them. There are four worldwide geodatabases, and another three that partially use their own data.
Best known, of course is Google’s, and you all know where to find their maps on both desktop and mobile. Not far behind is Here, which was once Navteq, and is on the Web as wego.here.com. Various services, including Bing and ViaMichelin use TomTom data, as do many in-vehicle navigation devices. Finally, there’s OpenStreetMap, which is “volunteered geographic data” in the same way that Wikipedia is volunteered information. However, so far, OSM has rapidly filled in much of the world to an impressive level of detail, with very few vandalism or similar hiccups. OSM data can be displayed with its native look, which I don’t find all that attractive, or in other dress. MapBox uses it to create maps that many websites use instead of Google’s tiles. The mobile app Maps.me uses it to make attractive maps for the phone that—when traveling internationally—I prefer for various reasons, including romanized town and streetnames.
Not yet worldwide, Apple has been carefully building its own data for use in Apple Maps, etc. The GIS software company Esri has woven together data from various sources including its local and state government users into its worldwide ArcMap services. And Yandex, the “Russian Google,” seems to have been building its own dataset, and it looks very good in that part of the world. Finally, there are the national mapping agencies, such as US Geological Survey—but of course they don’t map the entire world.
Who’s most accurate? My experience has been that Google is most up-to-date on business listings, while Here is most accurate on locally posted roadnames. Both TomTom and Here do lots of in-car navigation, so are probably a tossup on things like turn restrictions. If a municipality contributes to the Esri database, it may be most current on things like park and school names. OSM is reliant on its contributors, meaning areas with lots of computer geeks get looked at quite often (the level of detail in German cities is extraordinary, down to individual trees) while parts of the world with few computer users may not even have all the highways yet.