The redesign aims to personalise the product, deciding what to label to best match each user's interests. It also features new icons highlighting businesses running ads and promotions, which overlay the map.
This may make the maps more attractive to advertisers who have tended to focus on Google's main search page and rival platforms. The development was announced at Google's I/O developers conference in San Francisco.
Until now companies running pay-per-click marketing campaigns on Google's Maps service had their locations identified by a blue pin rather than the red marker used for other businesses.
However, it was not always obvious what the pins referred to as users had to select them or cross-reference a list on the side of the screen to discover what organisation each represented.
Now the names of businesses are shown on the map itself and the first few words of their ads appear in a box superimposed over their location. In addition if they are running a special offer, a blue shopping-tag icon appears next to their name.
