GOOGLE’S controversial Street View mapping tool will go live across the whole of Merseyside tomorrow, increasing their reach from the city centre as far as Wirral and West Lancashire.

Street View provides a way of searching for pictures of buildings, road by road, from your computer.

It uses a database of millions of photographs taken using 360 degree camera cars run by the search engine giant.

It launched in the UK last March featuring 25 UK cities, including Liverpool, but until now only inner cities were included.

For Liverpool, that meant as far as Walton in the north, Knotty Ash in the east, and Aigburth in the south, with Wirral totally excluded.

Now Google are rolling out a virtually nationwide version, from Thursday, featuring 238,000 miles of roads including previously ignored rural communities.

The UK now joins Spain, France, Italy and the US, which already have nationwide coverage in Street View.

Google communication manager Laura Scott said: “The project involved taking and stitching together millions of pictures over the last year. We’re pleased our drivers, who are often local people, have done such an amazing job.”

As part of the launch, Google asked for people to vote for their favourite street and two Liverpool locations came in the top 15 names.