Using Google Maps with ArcMap 10

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09-30-2011 01:37 PM
DanielLunsford1
New Contributor II
I am a college student using the evaluation version of ArcMap 10 for a project.

I would like to pull in Google Maps imagery into my ArcMap 10 maps. I understand that this can be done, but my question is: how? I'm a beginning ArcMap user and a lot of the Help items I've read through seem to be dead end: that is, I follow the directions on how to add tools, but the tool I am told to add isn't where the Help article says it should be... is it because I have an evaluation copy?

Can anyone direct me to a newbie-friendly, step-by-step instructions on how to do this? Or, can anyone point me toward a free source of detailed aerial maps that ArcMap can work with directly? I've found some USGS maps but they are all far too large scale to do me any good- I need to see individual buildings in some detail, well enough to get a decent measure of their footprint in square feet.
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54 Replies
JoshuaCrough
New Contributor III
On your Add Data button just choose "Add Base Map" amd you can add Bing Maps to your display.
PhilipShabanov1
New Contributor II

We found hdgooglebasemaps, it's available at hdgooglebasemaps.com 

by Anonymous User
Not applicable

$25?  No offense but is this legit? The site looks a little bit... sparse.  The only legit one I'd heard of was Arc2Earth (http://www.arc2earth.com/ ) but... now they are closed!

Google is shooting themselves in the foot I think.  I've seen a lot of smaller sites, even big ones, running from Google to Bing or Here or even Esri because they are now charging and making it harder to use. Their 'free' API key with certain number of hits, I hadn't been able to get to work, after one hit it seems to shut down.  Hm.  3rd party devs are what make or break a company. (Esri...publish unminified JS API and file GDB, with NDA would probably help..)  3rd party devs made the iPhone a success. 'mapplets' were amazing but Google killed those a while ago and now this. Oh well. I may make a Bing widget soon.

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PhilipShabanov1
New Contributor II

It's legit. Our department has used it for a couple of years. It has maps satellite and a really cool transparent hybrid later that we use the most.  The satellite imagery is much more up to date . And that price is promotional we paid more when we got it .

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Robert_LeClair
Esri Notable Contributor
Daniel - Google Base map imagery is a much requested addition to the Base Map gallery and has been added to the ArcGIS Ideas webpage.  It's currently marked as "Under Consideration."  You can vote for this idea at:  http://ideas.arcgis.com/ideaView?id=087300000008GlnAAE

Hope this helps!

Robert LeClair
Esri-Denver
SimonKettle
Occasional Contributor III
I think it would be worthwhile finding out what the pros and cons are when comparing Bing maps and Google maps...in my opinion Bing maps work just fine (although both have small errors of accuracy and Bing Maps are of low resolution in areas outside of highly populated regions like Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia) however, Google as a brand has captivated the market for world coverage of aerial imagery and alot of qustions on this forum as ask how can I use it Google Maps in ArcMap?

But does Google really have 'better' imagery? or system?

Cheers,
ForrestEnglish
New Contributor III
If you need aerial imagery in the USA, I suggest using the USDA NAIP images.  They're available from the NRCS geospatial data gateway.  http://datagateway.nrcs.usda.gov/

It's pretty decent stuff.
JayHanson
New Contributor III

You can also use WMS for NAIP Images.

http://gis.apfo.usda.gov/arcgis/services

JohnWarden
New Contributor III

Is this link correct?

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