Digital Life

City at your fingertips, with a couple of hitches


Google's indoor maps, currently only available on Google Maps for Android, enable users to delve virtually into places such as shopping centres, train stations and airports – predominantly in NSW and Victoria – to give users access to their floor plans.

At some places indoor maps can pinpoint users by using nearby mobile phone towers and Wi-Fi hotspots to triangulate their approximate location within a building. Wi-Fi and mobile towers are used to locate people as GPS doesn't work indoors as roofs obstruct the view of the sky.

So far, Google has surveyed about 40 locations in Australia to enable users to pinpoint themselves while indoors. Some Sydney locations with this feature include Central Station, the Queen Victoria Building, IKEA Homebush Bay Drive and the Museum of Contemporary Art.

So how well does the technology work? I tested it out in Sydney at Central Station, the Queen Victoria Building (QVB), Harbourside Sydney and at the Museum of Contemporary Art.

At the QVB, floor plans showed the correct names of many of the stores inside, though did not include the names for all of them. Some stores, for example, were listed as an empty block, which happens when floor plans are uploaded to Google by businesses which are out of date.

The blue pinpoint showing where I was inside the QVB followed me as I traversed into the building and up its escalators, where it then automatically switched to the first level's floor plan. It was, however, a little flaky at times and often showed me standing where I was a minute prior.


At Central Station the only floor plans available appeared to be of the top entrance, where many intercity trains depart from. The detail of that floor plan was very basic and hardly useful if I wanted to catch a train from a certain platform, as many platform numbers weren't listed and neither were the names of many shops, which are instead shown as their lot number.

Hungry Jacks was shown simply as lot “33”, even though it's been there for many years (time to update your floor plan, Central Station?) and train platforms appeared as grey rectangles.

The pinpoint tracked me at the top part of Central Station quite well until I went to the suburban trains, where it then got lost as there may not have been enough Wi-Fi nearby to triangulate me.

Also, when I stood next to the station manager's office and attempted to navigate to it using walking directions, it directed me to go out of one entrance and come back into another. Google tells me this is because walking directions for the inside of buildings haven't been switched on.

At the Museum of Contemporary Art the pinpoint initially worked well, but when it came time for it to transition to level 2's floor plan once I got out of the lift I had to manually change to it. The plans at the art museum showed things such as galleries, screening rooms and toilets.

Where Google hasn't surveyed a building and there isn't much Wi-Fi around to help a user's smartphone determine where it is, a big circle often appears on the screen, suggesting that the user is located somewhere within it. This is what I found when testing out indoor maps at Harbourside Sydney in Darling Harbour, one of the locations where Google Maps basically turns your phone into a map found at a shopping centre with no “you are here” pointer.

Although still helpful for finding stores within the Harbourside shopping centre, without the pinpoint telling me where I was I had to constantly look for nearby shop names, like I would with a regular physical map plastered on a directory. How old fashioned and uncool!

In conclusion, Google's indoor maps are a useful tool for commuters, shoppers and tourists, but rely heavily on many venue's floor maps, which aren't always detailed, meaning it's sometimes easier to just use indoor signs. I was surprised that none of Central Station's platforms were numbered on the indoors maps and that many of the food joints were only listed by their lot number.

The other downside I found while testing was that the pinpoint dot that is meant to follow you around didn't always accurately locate me. Sometimes I would stand still and it would move me 50 metres away. Indoor walking directions also weren't available a lot of the time.

Overall, it's a little gimmicky, but still a cool feature to have built into Google Maps. If you're a business you can help by uploading your indoor floor plans to You can also help make the pinpoint more accurate by using a smartphone app and walking around to map out nearby Wi-Fi like Google's Street View cars did when taking photos of houses.

twitter This reporter is on Facebook: /bengrubb


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