The recent conflict in the country of Georgia has led to the question of “where’s Georgia?” on Google Maps.  Some sources claimed that Google removed its data for Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia soon after the fighting began in South Ossetia.

Currently there are only outlines of the countries with no roads, city locations or any other data.  Google counters this claim, stating: “Google has not made any recent change to Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan in Google Maps,” the company said in a statement. “We do not have local data for those countries and that is why local details such as landmarks and cities do not appear.”  Google further clarified:

The most obvious question is, why doesn’t Google Maps show any cities or roads for Georgia, or its neighbors Armenia and Azerbaijan? The answer is we never launched coverage in those countries because we simply weren’t satisfied with the map data we had available.

What’s interesting is that some Georgian data is available in Google Earth as noted in the Google post:

In the meantime, much of this data, including cities in Georgia and other surrounding countries, can be found in Google Earth.

SearchEngineWatch compares the data availability of Georgia with screenshots of Microsoft’s Virtual Earth, Yahoo! Maps, and Google Maps and determined that Virtual Earth offered the best geographic data.  A more comprehensive source of information on Georgia is the CIA Factbook.

A screen shot of Google Maps showing the countries of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan with no roads, city locations or any other geographic data.