Extending the traffic feature of its Maps service beyond the highways, Google now provides traffic monitoring advantage for the 'arterial' roads, thereby helping the users to guesstimate traffic on side-streets and alternate routes.

The extension of the traffic monitoring feature, which thus far was limited only to the freeways, will give the commuters a clear idea of the traffic condition, and help them better plan out their routes, to avoid areas with traffic congestion.

For further convenience, Google will highlight the traffic situation using different color codes - red for heavy traffic; orange for medium traffic; green for no traffic; and a red- black color for 'stop-and-go' traffic.

It is from the users of the Google Maps service, on GPS-enabled mobile phones, that Google gets the traffic information. The Google Maps' product manager Dave Barth elaborated in a blog post that Google combines the speeds of the different phones of the users commuting in the city, to gauge the traffic condition.

Barth added: "We only use anonymous speed and location information to calculate traffic conditions, and only do so when you have chosen to enable location services on your phone. We use our scale to provide further privacy protection: When a lot of people are reporting data from the same area, we combine their data together to make it hard to tell one phone from another."