GOOGLE MY MAPS TUTORIAL | Get Started with Travel Planning

today's video I wanted to share a Google my maps tutorial because for the longest time I've been a Google Maps fan last year or so I stumbled upon Google my maps when I was doing some work on my computer and I found out that there's like this whole upgraded version of just Google Maps that you can use on your laptop and it's super interactive and you can change up so much more and it's basically like an upgraded version of just regular lists that you can make on Google Maps so quick little disclaimer Google my maps is currently only available for editing on your desktop it's not available on iPad or iPhone but it's so much easier on a bigger screen so in order to get started you need to type in Google to search for Google my maps it's important that you add the my in there because otherwise it will just take you to the standard Google Maps and that's not what we want we want Google my maps you will then click on their website and it will take you to this page as you can see I already have some maps here these are some of them that I've created in the past in order to get started you just click on create my map the first thing that you can do is give your map a name so obviously you can see here that your Maps currently Untitled and once you click on that you will be able to rename your map to whatever you want so let's say that we are going to create a two-week vacation going to Spain so I'll just call this one Spain two week Vicky you can add a little description um say it's your summer holiday break for two weeks in Spain I don't always use the description sometimes when I'm creating maps to resell on my own page I will add in a little bit more info about who I am and what this map is for and who it is for but you can basically like create whatever you want on there and put whatever you want in there then a second thing that you can do is as you see this is like your standard Google Maps map but you can totally change this to fit whatever aesthetic you want you can have like the Earth view you can have like just another like terrain view then you can have like a lighter view just this pink one this brown one there's like so many different ones that you can use whatever you want I personally just prefer like the standard base layer uh map that just looks like your Google Maps but like I said you can change it to whatever you want it with your Google my maps it is important to kind of understand the basic features that Google my maps has and the first feature is a layer so what's a layer a layer is basically one part of your map that is split up from different parts of your trip so if you only wanted to see for example one part of your journey you can deselect all of the other layers and only view the items that are saved to that layer on Google my maps you can create up to 10 different layers so there is a little bit of a limit on how many different layers you can create but if you need more layers I would suggest just creating a second map and have like the second part of your vacation on there I personally would recommend splitting up your layers into different countries or cities that you're going to on your trip so for our Spain example I would split it up into to the different cities that you're going to say Madrid Valencia Barcelona and I would just create one layer for each of these cities so that it can be easy to separate what's where within each layer you can create up to 2 000 different items so even though the layers are limited what you can add within your layer is not really that limited because I don't think you will add more than 2 000 places but it is an option and you can get up to 20 000 within one map divided over 10 different layers to create a marker you go to the little marker or little pin icon that is underneath the search bar and you can add a marker this way now doing this just manually creates a place on the map when you click on it but as you can see this is not very specific it just is like throwing a dart on a map and adding that place if you want to make it a little bit more specific you can cancel that one that you just created and you can go to the search bar and type in the place that you want to save so for example you can save the Madrid Airport saying that that is your starting point of where you're going on your trip once you've typed that place in your search bar it will automatically go to that location and you can choose to add this place to your map and by doing that you have just created a marker now you can customize this marker but we'll go into detail on how to do that in just a little bit for now it's just good to know that if you want to add a place you can do it manually by using the marker or like pin icon and just dropping a DOT on your map by clicking on it or you can type in the search bar the place that you want to save and then click to add to map then the second thing that you can create is a line so say for example you want to kind of have a general overview of all the places that you'll be traveling to or I for example really love using this if I'm taking flights which have layovers and you can just kind of create this bird's eye view of what the flight will look like this is just like a straight line so it's not specific at all just like bird's eye view from one place to another now in order to create a line you do have to use this little symbol that is right next to the marker symbol which says draw a line and once you do that you can choose to just add a regular line or shape or you can create a driving route biking route or walking route but we'll go into that option in a little bit so for now let's just click on the first one and create a little wine so once you do that you will see that your mouse has changed to this little plus so say you want to draw like the bird's eye view from Madrid to Valencia what you will do is you will go to Madrid you will click on it and then you will just drag your mouse to Valencia and then click there again now once you've clicked once this will have created the line for you and you don't want to keep continuing your line so what you will do is once you've clicked once from Madrid to get that dot then once to get the dot for Valencia then click again on the little circle in Valencia and that will stop drawing your line so that you don't continuously keep drawing lines yeah those are basically the two things that you can save within a layer that is on Google my maps now there is a third kind of option which you can do and that is going back to the driving cycling or walking route but this will generate a whole different layer because it cannot create directions within a layer the directions themselves will become their own layer so I would only use this feature if for example you're going actually on a like hiking trip a cycling trip or a road trip because they have limitations on how many spots you can an ad within your directions which is the same on Google Maps you can only create up to letter j or something of different places that you can go and it is the same in Google mind maps so you can't continuously keep adding spots to One Direction so if you want to add directions to your route then you can do this either by clicking on the draw the line icon but I personally would use the icon right next to it which is the directions icon because it is so much easier to use than the draw the line One clicking on the add directions icon and as you can see this will create a new layer like I was saying before you cannot create a driving layer within another layer that you're making the directions themselves will become their own layer so what you can do here is for example type in that you're going from a grid then headed to Valencia then headed to Barcelona and then for example going back to Madrid this will will generate your directions and it will end up looking something like this now if you want to be more specific you can add the names of your hotel within the directions and it will automatically create like Guides of how to get to that destination but if you just want to use it to have like kind of a view of what your route will look like then I would just add the names of the cities that you're going to and it will create the same effect if you're now for example would do this journey but do it all by bike you can quickly change the transportation mode by clicking on the card that is shown there and going to cycling or going to walking and it will modify the route for you so as you can see I've just added a bunch of little random spots to my map so you can see what it would kind of look like if you have multiple places saved now some Advanced features of what you can do to make your guide a little bit more useful and have additional information you can for example click on a certain spot and then click edit and you can change the name of your place and you can add a little bit more details to it or even add a picture to a place so here for example you can see that the airport is saved as its full name the shortened name on the left side doesn't even say that this pin spot is the airport so you can easily change that by just calling this spot Madrid Airport and then you can save it and you can see that the place is changed to just Madrid Airport which is so much easier say for example you want to add it a little bit more and say that this Airport is the airport where you arrive you can add so many different things in there you can add a link to the hotel page you can add your like flight number in there anything you want to add that is useful for you you can add in this little description feature and if you want you can add a picture to it but the picture feature is a little bit limited so for now I haven't personally used it then I also just wanted to show you what a multiple step line would look like say for example you are coming from the London Airport and having a layover in Paris and then going to Madrid then you can create a line by going from London like I said you add a DOT you click once then you drag the line to Paris you click one more time and then you can add another line that is going to Madrid you click another time and like I was saying before as you keep drawing it will keep creating these lines which is just a little bit annoying so what you can do instead is just click one more time on Madrid and you can call this for example your flight from London via Paris to Madrid and then save that it will also share how much it is in like flight miles which I think is really cool this is just what a multi-dot line would look like it will have your little dots and have like the different places that you're going to I just also quickly wanted to mention that you can change the places of the points that you added so for example here you can see that my journey from Madrid to Valencia is all the way at the top and then my flight from London via Paris is all the way at the bottom but I would prefer these lines to be all the way at the top so what I will just do is I will click and drag the place all the way to the top and then I will add the second Journey right below that this is just like for me personally it's easier to have it in that order on the left hand side and you can change it into whatever is easiest for you now this video wouldn't be over if I wasn't going to show you guys how you can make this aesthetically a lot more easy to read but also just prettier looking so let's get into how you can customize your Google my maps list to make it look exactly how you want so in order to make your map look a little bit more aesthetic what you can do is first up you can change the colors of your lines so say for example you want to change this to like a red color or like a pinky red color and you can also change the width of your line so if you want to make it just a little bit more visually clear that you're drawing a thicker line for example this seems good to me then you can have it be like clear on your map that you're going from one place to another and again you can also change the name add pictures to it everything that you can do to just a different marker you can also do here you can also add like a description you can even add your booking code everything like that you can make this as personal as you want that's basically everything that you can do with your lines you can change them in color and you can change the width of the line so if you want to change up your markers there's a few things that you can do so let's take the Madrid Airport one as an example and you can click here on the little Paint Bucket to make it different and change it up to what you want so if you want to change anything about a specific icon you can click the little Paint Bucket here or you can click it while you're here and one thing that is the same is that you can change the color of your icon so say for example you want the airport to be like this gray color you will automatically see that the pin is change to a gray color and you can also change the icon now here's a list of a few popular icons that you can do for example you can change them to the star or you can change it into like a bed if this was your accommodation say you want to change this to a little flight Emoji because it's an airport then you can just click on the more button and it will give you all of these different shapes it has a few different categories like sports places which has a ton Transportation crisis weather and animals now I personally think that the places and the transportation are the ones that you will use most and so for example for this one there's a little airport icon which has a plane on it and let's use that one now you can see that your marker from the airport has changed to a gray color and it's also the icon of an airport instead of just the like little Point marker that was there before and is still there for all the other places those are basically all the basic Advanced and aesthetic changes that you can do to your Google my maps list let's go ahead and change them up for all of these to show you what your map would look like once you've changed all of the icons and make them into something like this I hope you guys enjoyed watching this video make sure to subscribe to my channel because I've been creating a whole series about how you can plan your travels using all of my best tips and resources there's already a few videos out in this series but there are more coming soon so stay tuned for that one have a wonderful day and I will see you in the next video

Channel: travelaimes

Views: 31,342

Keywords: travelaimes, lisaura goossens, google maps, google my maps, google maps secrets, google maps layers, google my maps tutorial, how to use google my maps, creating a google my maps, how to make a google my maps, how to edit layers in google my maps, google mymaps, mymaps tutorial, my maps tutorial, google mapps, create google map, creating google map, creating a google map, how to create a google map, make a map online, mapping tools, travel planning tools, make a map, maps

Id: SPXqlYFE2S0

Length: 16min 33sec (993 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 26 2023