Amazon's A9.com search engine on Tuesday began to offer a street-level photo mapping service it hopes will compete with similar services from MSN and Google. The company says that using street-level views of city blocks instead of satellite images will give it an edge over other services.

In January, A9.com began to offer photos within its Yellow Page listings. A picture would be shown of the business, as well as a block view that would display adjacent storefronts.

"It's like taking a virtual stroll around the block," said Udi Manber, A9's CEO at the time. "We believe this is going to expand the user experience significantly."

The index includes 35 million photographs from 22 U.S. cities. The photos would be displayed alongside a traditional map showing the grid of streets.

Amazon believes the service will be much more helpful than satellite-based services due to its more realistic view of the world. Also, the service would be able to show photos of businesses along the route if they are in the service's database.

"We're making maps slightly less abstract and closer to the real world," Manber said.

Even with the addition of these new features, and the backing of a successful online company, A9.com still suffers from a lack of traffic. Nielsen/NetRatings ranked it 27th among search engines, up slightly from the beginning of the year when it ranked 30th.

The 22 cities that are now available on A9.com's photo-based maps service are: Atlanta; Austin, Texas; Boston; Chicago; Dallas; Denver, Detroit; Fargo, N.D.; Houston; Los Angeles, Miami; New York; Philadelphia; Phoenix; Portland, Ore.; Sacramento, Calif.; Salt Lake City; San Diego; San Francisco; San Jose, Calif.; Seattle; and Washington D.C.