Multimap, one of the world’s leading online mapping providers, today announced the launch of free maps and reciprocal links for small businesses across Australia and New Zealand. Businesses with between one and five outlets registering fewer than 5,000 map impressions per year can now benefit from Multimap’s comprehensive street-level coverage of the region at no charge, in a few easy steps. In addition, through free listings on www.multimap.com.au, these businesses also benefit from exposure to more than 160,000 local unique users, and a worldwide user base of more than 10 million.

Chris Warrick, Managing Director for Multimap Australasia, said, “Multimap is an established international name in the online mapping and location-based services arena. Over a decade’s experience in the sector has shown that the provision of maps on a business’s website not only significantly enhances the end-user’s experience but also serves to boost brand loyalty and increase footfall through the doors. We are delighted to be the only online mapping provider in the region to offer small businesses the benefits of this invaluable free tool.”

To set up a free reciprocal link takes less than two minutes. A user simply:

Once these steps have been completed, a link to the selected map appears on the business’s website. Customers who click on the map link will be shown maps of the business’s outlets, on Multimap‘s website. The company’s listing will appear on www.multimap.com.au when users select the ‘Local Information’ category that the company has chosen.

“We are very pleased to make this announcement at such an exciting time in the history of Multimap Australasia. In September of 2005, we doubled not only our page views of the region (from one to two million a month) but also our unique user numbers (from 80,000 to 160,000). Multimap Australasia is growing quickly, and we’re keen to extend the benefits of online mapping to businesses of all sizes.”

About Multimap

Multimap is one of the world’s leading providers of mapping and location-based services. The company delivers more online maps, point-to-point driving directions and geo-spatial ("where's my nearest?") searches to more companies than any other supplier in Europe. All services are offered on mobile, PDA, kiosk, and interactive TV platforms and in multiple languages.

The public website, www.multimap.com, provides a range of free, useful services to assist with everyday life. Key features include street-level maps of Europe, USA, Canada, New Zealand and Australia; road maps of the world; door-to-door travel directions; aerial photographs; links to location information; and services such as hotel, restaurant and entertainment booking. The public site attracts over 10 million unique users, registers more than 200 million page impressions every month, and is one of the top 10 most visited websites in the UK. Multimap recently featured in The Sunday Times Fast Track 100 league table of fastest-growing unquoted UK companies across all sectors, as well as in The Sunday Times Microsoft Tech Track 100 league of fastest-growing unquoted UK technology companies for the third year running.

In the Australian and New Zealand markets, leading companies including Optus Mobile, Wotif.com.au, Flight Centre.com.au, PropertyLook.com.au, eHound, aussiehome.com, Homehound.com, Commercial Real Estate, Telecom New Zealand and Colliers International NZ, have selected Multimap as their online mapping partner. They tell us that our location-based services not only offer rich content that enhances the user's experience of their sites, but that they also drive people to their client’s real-world locations. Increased footfall through the doors translates easily and quickly to growth in sales.