OREANDA-NEWS. November 14, 2008. Yandex offers website developers Yandex.Maps API (in Russian), a toolkit for creating their own map services. Any web site owner now can embed Yandex.Maps and use the new functionality at their own discretion.

The Yandex.Maps API allows web users to meet a variety of challenges from creating an office location map to generating a full-scale geoinformation service. For instance, the Yandex API lets banks put on the map a network of their offices and ATMs while travel agencies can add hotels and pictures of tourist attractions. The Yandex.Maps API provides web users with functionality to create their own geoservices of varying complexity, such as a business directory featuring map search capability or a social network offering neighbor search functionality.

“It takes a lot of engineering effort and money to build a map and publish it online”, says Andrey Karmatsky, the Yandex.Maps manager. “What we offer is a finished product that is easy to use in all sorts of projects”.

The new Yandex toolkit gives access to dozens of various maps and satellite images including the most detailed online map of the world in Russian and detailed maps of cities in Russia and Ukraine.

You can learn more about the Yandex.Maps API at the service’s web page (in Russian) or ask questions and share experience in developers’ community (in Russian).