WebProNews

Maybe car or restaurant reviews seem a little more useful, but no matter; Google is now allowing people to rate and comment on everything created with its My Maps software.

After all, here’s the thing about user-generated content: a lot of it sucks, and maps are probably no exception to this rule.  On the other hand, we’ve seen some really neat maps tossed about, and their creators definitely deserve a pat on the back.

So whether you want to give kudos or kill somebody’s creativity, Google’s Qiushuang (Autumn) Zhang writes, “To get to the new comments page, just click on the new ratings and comments links on the My Maps pages.”

On the Google LatLong Blog, Zhang also lets readers know, “You’ll . . . find a top links section that shows which websites and blogs are referring traffic to the map.  If you’re curious about where your map’s huge number of views have been coming from, just check out your referrals.”

We’ve seen at least one other example of Google Maps becoming more social in the past month, and this week’s developments just continue a positive trend.