Is someone feeling a little bit of Bing envy? I’m kidding of course, but one of the nice features of Bing (which I’ve been testing as my default for the last week or so) is that when you search for a location, it conveniently aggregates information – like weather, pictures, images, and related searches – along the left-hand sidebar of the search results.

Today, Google added some location-based search features of its own aimed at making such queries more useful – pictures. Now, when you search for a given location, the search results include both a map of the location as well as photos. Clicking on those photos takes you to their respective location in the very fun photo layer of Google Maps. For example, here’s a search for New York, NY:

As Google writes in their blog, “we think this is a great way to get a better sense of a location as well as get a taste of some of the great user-contributed photos that await on Google Maps.” We agree, but also wonder if it’s a hint of things to come as far as Google adding more and more features to its famously sparse search results.

Tags: bing, Google, search engines