Direction on a Map It's usually measured in terms of compass directions: north, south, east, and west. North is directly up on standard maps; south is directly down; east is directly right; and west is directly left.

To get easy, turn-by-turn navigation to places, use the Google Maps app. Maps shows you directions and uses real-time traffic information to find the best route to your destination.

But you can also use Google Earth to map driving directions, just as you can with Google Maps. The big difference in using Google Earth for this purpose is that your directions are mapped in a 3D view, so you can get more of a birds-eye view of where you'll be driving.