When you search for local businesses on Google Maps, you will now see more than just ten results at a time plotted on the map. While the initial ten will still be plotted by pins and letters as before, you will see dots representing many more search results.
From there you can easily click on any given dot and find out what it is without having to scroll through more search results. There are many instances in which this feature would be useful. Nina King on the Google Lat Long Blog gives the example of if you had a coffee house located just behind your apartment, but it was not listed in the top ten results, you would easily be able to see how close it was, and it could potentially save you from having to drive across town for coffee.
On top of that, with many queries, you will be able to zoom out and get a view of related results within a much larger region than just a specific town. For example, I searched for “Starbucks, Lexington, KY,” and while the initial search brings up a zoomed in map to locations in Lexington, if I zoom out, I will see dots for Starbucks all over the country.
The top ten results will still appear in the left-hand pane and as when you do searches. Right now, the feature is available for maps.google.com, but Kang says more domains will get it in the near future.
