Google Maps now allows you to add more than one stop off point on your journey, so you can choose where you want your trip to be via. This is a very fundamental feature for any route planning service to have, and it is one that Ask and Yahoo! Maps have had since conception. The implementation in this case is very slick, and quite subtle with no major changes to the way the award winning service looks.

The side bar of driving instructions gets one new link at the bottom entitled “Add Destination…” which does precisely that. Once added you can drag-and-drop the locations to reorder them, and you can use the small plus signs to expose the directions between two stop points.

For a sample query this is how the sidebar now looks:

One point of note is that the computational time with just three locations is significantly longer that with two. And as you add more and more it becomes even more sluggish. I think it only feels so slow though since everything else about Google Maps is so fast. I am not convinced that it is taking Google longer to work out the route than it takes a traditional internet mapping service like say Multimap. When the map is finally rendered it features the new pause icon for the stop off point, but is otherwise no different to any other Google Map.

The syntax for the feature is very simple. You specify the starting point with from: and then write the stopping points in the order you wish to visit them each with to: prefixed. And one real positive from this release is that it was rolled out simultaneously across the international versions meaning it works today in the US and throughout Europe.

Sam Davyson is a new writer for Gizbuzz, you can find out more about him on the About page.