I’d bet that Yahoo! Maps is probably the most trafficked mapping site on the web (or if not, for sure one of the top three). However, you wouldn’t know if from reading the recent news regarding Internet-based maps. But whatever, on to the mapping news.

The WSJ today reported on Microsoft’s announcement of its soon-to-be-released Virtual Earth product.

Virtual Earth, which will be run by Microsoft’s MSN unit, is part of a broader push by Internet companies to use aerial images and other graphical elements to more accurately recreate on the Internet how people might look for things in the real world. Mr. Gates, speaking at a Wall Street Journal conference in Carlsbad, Calif., said he expects Microsoft’s service to lift map-based searching to “a whole new level.” But he acknowledged, “There’s going to be a lot of competition in the mapping area.”

To get a better idea of some of the features of Virtual Earth, there’s a new video over on Microsoft’s Channel 9 demonstrating Virtual Earth. In the demo, they show a couple of “overlay” modes where you can overlay street names on top of a satellite image, or overlay locations of local shops on the satellite image. Pretty cool stuff. The UI is all browser based (no ActiveX stuff) and makes extensive use of AJAX, which makes interfacing with the maps much easier. That is, you can drag the map around with your mouse, zoom in and out with the scroll wheel and some other nifty features.

But back to Yahoo!. Jeez, even Amazon — a new comer to search and mapping with it’s A9 service (and more specifically, the A9 Yellow Pages service) — gets mentioned in the WSJ article.

In January, Amazon.com Inc. rolled out Block View, a feature that shows photos of storefronts alongside local search results that give the impression of walking up and down streets.

I really think that Yahoo! needs to examine how (or if?) they are doing PR. I’m sure that Yahoo! — especially since the launch Google Maps with its cutting-edge AJAX interface — is working on a new version of Yahoo! Maps. But again, you wouldn’t know what by reading the news. Not being mentioned at all when you are one of the leaders, if not the leader, in Internet mapping is clearly bad. As they say, any PR is good PR.