How Google Helped Haiti
We already know how useful Google Maps can be for both national and regional SEO campaigns, but it’s also been a key tool to helping save lives after the earthquake in Haiti which claimed so many lives in 2010.
Via GeoEye, Google took aerial pictures of the Pétionville golf course – Haiti’s only golf course – as it filled up with tents occupied by the homeless and became a relief site. The progression of how the site developed can be viewed on Google Maps, and it’s astonishing to see the progression over time as people flock to the area.
Instant, visual representations through Google Maps helped to keep the global population updated about the human devastation caused by the quake, and offered a window into the troubles in the area on a consistent basis.
Google though went one step further, sending out a small team to help restore the area’s internet connectivity, and put a landing page on Google.org to keep people updated with the latest news and information on how to help. Google also asked their web development team to build a small tool from the People Finder Interchange Format to help the public try and locate missing loved ones. Within three days records of over 50,000 people were built up.
The Google database project, Resource finder, which helped people to find medical centres and more as the crisis lengthened. Crisis project leader, Prem Ramaswami, said recently: "The 82nd Airborne was using Google Maps because it's a tool they know and understand. We just wanted to find something Google could do, to use its strengths to help the NGOs. Ushahidi, Doctors Without Borders and lots of other organisations were doing amazing things on the ground, and we wanted to use engineering to solve problems."
It’s small touches like this that show Google is trying to be more than a company that offers pay per click and a wonderful seach service, and though Google Maps can be great for SEO, it showed an infinitely more useful purpose by helping save those in need.
