How to Create your own Map using Google My Maps

You can create your own maps by adding several other layers on top of the Google Map using the Google My Maps feature. Once you create your custom maps, you can share it with your team or anyone. You can view it on any device. In this post, I will show you how easily you can create your own maps using Google My Maps.

How to create and share custom maps with Google My Maps

First of all you need to be logged into Your Google account using your Gmail.

Let’s assume you’re going to organize some surveys in several geographically dispersed locations. It will make your job easy if you can map the survey location and include all the attributes of the locations on the map. You may also need to communicate the survey plan to your staff.

To create your map, go to Google My Maps and, click the “CREATE A NEW MAP” button. You can also access this feature through the Google Maps menu, Your Places > Maps > Create Map. Now you have created a new map, and it will automatically save on your Google Drive.

Rename your map and add a brief description

To rename your map, click on “Untitled map” and provide your map title and description in the relevant fields of the popup window.

Layers

You can organize your map features with map layers. For example, you can put your survey locations into one layer and accommodations into another layer. You can name these layers, add different icons and colors, etc… You can have 2000 lines, shapes, or places in a layer and a map can have up to 10,000 lines, shapes, or places.

Adding markers

You can add your places by searching for locations or drawing them directly on the map. To draw a place, click the marker icon and again click on the map where you want to add the place. Now you can rename the marker and add a description too.

If you have a set of coordinates (latitude and longitude) as a spreadsheet or as a CSV file, you can import them to a layer in Google My Maps. Those coordinates are added to the map with separate markers for each coordinate.

Draw lines

You can either draw lines and polygons arbitrarily on the map or use driving mode to connect your points via the road network. And also you can import lines and polygons in KML formats.

Modifying the data table and adding other attributes to the markers

You can also add more information to the markers using the data table. To open the data table, click on the “Layer options” (the menu icon) of the relevant layer and select “Open data table“.

The rows of the table represent the markers. You can see the relevant markers are highlighted when you hover over the rows. You can add attributes by adding more columns to the table. The details added, can also be viewed through the marker’s info window.

To add a new column (attribute), click the small down arrow at the RHS of an existing column heading and select Insert column before/ after. In the popup window, give a column name and select the appropriate data type from the dropdown and click the Add button.

You may also be interested in How to Export Google My Maps Data Table to Excel.

Change colors

You can apply different colors for markers to make your map more meaningful. Colors can be applied based on layers, based on attribute values, or individual basis. To apply individual styles, hover over the legend and click on the paint bucket. You can also access this function from the info window of the marker.

To apply colors based on the values of the data table, click the paintbrush icon below the layer name. Then select the column name from the “Group places by” dropdown list.

Label the markers

Click the paintbrush icon located just below the layer name. In the popup menu, click the dropdown menu under the “Set labels” option. Then select the attribute name you want to add as labels.

Change the base map

To change the base map, click the small arrow (Base map) at the bottom of the legend and select a suitable base map.

You can share the map

You can share the map among your team using their Gmail addresses, and then they also can view/ edit the map. You can select the access levels from the dropdown menu: Can view or Can edit.

Printing the map

Zoom the map into the appropriate level (you may have to do some trial and error). Then click the menu icon in front of the map title and select “Print map” (you can also use Ctrl+P to access this option). Then change the print setting appropriately and click “Print“.

Wrapping Up

Google My Maps is a very helpful tool for the team works. You can share it with anyone and can view any device from anywhere you want. This post is a basic introduction to Google my maps. The “My Map” options are not limited to the above. Visit Google My Map Help to learn more about My Maps.

2 thoughts on “How to Create your own Map using Google My Maps”

  1. I have been searching unsuccessfully for a way to create a territory map in Google My Maps. When I saw the image at the beginning of your article, I thought I had find a solution. Sadly, that was not what you were discussing in this article. There has to be a way, but I can’t find it. I am hoping you can show me how. I have a google sheet with every county in the US represented by a row. The column names that would be used for creating a map are country, state, county, division name. The map type I am referring to is the bottom right corner of the 4 maps shown at the top of your article. How did you create that? Thank you very much for any help.

    Dale

    Reply

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