How do you update Google Maps?

In 2006 google Maps was updated to use the same satellite image database as google Earth. Before that google had to update and process imagery for both google Earth and google Maps where the maps where often out of sync with each other. Now google updates its central map & imagery database and the updates are made available to both google Earth and google Maps at once.

The time between getting imagery from satellite and seeing it on google Maps is far from real-time. Once the imagery is taken by satellite, it takes time to process the data by a commercial provider like GeoEye before it is available to google and other customers. google will do additional processing to convert imagery into the format and coordinate system of its internal databases. This is one reason you normally won't find any imagery younger than about 6 months.

For these reasons, the google map & imagery database is updated once or twice a month.