Google has certainly been busy updating Maps in the month of October, and now, they’ve rolled out a new feature that shows terrain, color gradations to depict vegetation, and labels for natural land formations. This helps Google Maps provide even more detailed information to users of its service. Google Maps users can now find great forests, mountain ranges and other natural formations more easily.

The new Google Maps clearly give us a more realistic feel for the natural features on Earth. Whereas the old images appeared flat, unless you enabled satellite, this update clearly shows the diverse features on the surface of the planet. Google Maps already had incredible detail, but this update takes it to another level, and clearly puts it ahead of other map services.

This update for Google Maps comes at the perfect time. Apple just launched its own Apple Maps, and it came under a large amount of scrutiny. Google’s continuing efforts to improve its service with this update, improved Street View, and even going to the Grand Canyon, clearly put it miles ahead of the competition. Google actually offered information similar to this for a long time, but it was not on by default. Now, it’s a fixture of the Maps service, and it is a great improvement.

The photo above shows how Maps looked before the update.

The update is rolling out as we speak, and you should start seeing it soon, if you don’t already. It will be apparent very quickly when the update goes live, as it makes drastic changes to the appearance of Maps. October has certainly been a great month for Google Maps; let’s hope they keep this momentum going forward through the rest of the year.

[via Google Maps Blog]