It's easy to make your own Google Map that shows the locations of any places you'd like to remember or share with your friends. A Google Map is particularly useful when the places you like are hard to run searches for, and they have a unique appearance in satellite photos, such as something defective about their roofs.
Caution: If you retrieve information such as driving routes and locations in Google Maps, and then try to save those results, you won't be able to! Instead, you need to decide ahead of time that you will want to save such information; and create a map before you begin to retrieve it.
Example:
1. Make sure you don't have an active search result, by clicking the
X. At this point it doesn't matter what territory the map is displaying.
2. You get a blank search field and, on the second line,
My Maps. Click
My Maps.
3. You get a list of maps you already have, if any. Click
Create.
4. You get a map of the US (or, just guessing, a map of whatever country you're located in; Google is really smart). Type something into
Search to navigate to the part of the world you're interested in, like Seattle. Click the magnifying glass.
5. We'll want to see buildings and stuff like that. So let's use a base map we can see buildings in. Click the down-arrow next to
Base map.
6. Sample swatches of base maps are displayed. Click the
Satellite swatch.
7. I can't think why you'd want a visual map of odd buildings. But let's say you are addicted to McDonald's milkshakes and need a quick way to find the nearest McDonald's (pretending for now that you can't just run a search for McDonald's). You scroll around until you find a building with a defective roof. In the toolbar, click the
pin icon.
8. Your cursor turns into cross-hairs. Aim them at the building you want to remember, and click to drop a pin. A text entry box pops up. Give the location a name and, if you'd like, write something about it. If you write a lot, the box will stretch. Click
Save.
In the top left corner, click on
Untitled Map to replace it with your own name for your map. You'll get a chance to write a description of the map, too. Now, notice the
Share icon.
9. Click
Share to get a text entry box that controls who else can see or edit your map.
10. You'll probably want to make sure that anyone who opens the map gets a useful view right away. So, arrange the map as you would want it to be seen. Then click the
three dots on the right end of the Add Layer / Share bar. A menu drops down; click
Set default view.
There's a lot more depth to Google Maps. But you're an explorer! And I guess this post is long enough. Enjoy!