I was wondering how often does Google update its Maps especially its street view. I was just doing some random browsing of airports like LAX and SFO, when I zoom in to street view, its outdated as it still has Northwest and Continental aircraft as well as United's battleship gray livery.

The short answer is continuously. They are always updating (both Satellite Imagery and Street View). As to how often a particular street is indexed, I don't know that anyone besides the google map's car driver would have an answer.

Google has released a handy Google Map showing where satellite views have been updated. Currently, it's showing the imagery that was updated in December 2013

I live in an area that is growing by leaps and bounds and Google Maps updates new roads and landmarks with astonishing speed.

They also provide a webpage showing where they are currently doing StreetView updates.

I found one post that said " most of the imagery is 4 - 5 years old." - I suspect they are driving new areas more frequently than re-driving existing areas. After all, the houses on my street aren't going to change much year after year. That's probably true for most places.

What about Google's aerial view or "birds eye" view? How often do they get updated? I was viewing LAX and SFO and they are way outdated. Also, Manhattan, NYC doesn't seem to have any aerial views? Maybe a security issue perhaps?

I was laughing with a friend only this week about this. She lives beside a major road in Scotland and the street view there is at least five years old. The filling station shown there has had two brand "makeovers" since it was last updated on street view.

There are four pieces to this:

- the road map you see in Google Maps / Earth. Anyone can suggest edits to this by drawing new / changed roads, and there's a review process for these changes (it works, I've edited several roads near me and the changes have been made to the main map, with emails advising of the progress)

- the overhead satellite imagery in Maps and Earth, which is updated regularly and the URL mentioned above shows what imagery was updated

- the low-altitude aerial imagery that you see when zoomed in to the satellite imagery in certain areas. This is also updated regularly but I'm not aware of a definitive list of covered areas

- the Street View imagery collected by car / trike / backpack. Updated imagery doesn't seem to be announced, from what I've seen, but entirely new coverage of an area is often promoted on the Google Maps blog.

Interesting that they have street view in Antarctica.

When I bought a new home in California a few years ago, it was in the wrong place in Google Maps. I emailed Google about this, got an auto response saying they'd look into it and it was changed within three weeks.

Guess it depends on the area. My home is new construction and I've lived here 13 months now. Its still an empty dirt field on Google Maps. So that's at least 18 months (from my move in + construction). I give people the address and they immediately look it up and say "you live in the desert?"

FWIW Bing Maps is even further behind. Some of the people they have living on dirt have lived here over two years.

How do I contact google?

You can edit the map features yourself here:
google.com/mapmaker

They do not care about inbound email requests for updated street view or satellite imagery

In Google Maps, search for your address. A bubble marker will appear where Maps thinks the address is located. Click the bubble to open an information box. Several links will appear at the bottom of the box. Click the rightmost link, "More", then click "Report a problem" at the bottom of the menu that drops down.