Want to see how the holiday moves across the globe? Google invites the global audience to visit the dedicated website www.google.com/santatracker to follow the iconic character as he travels to various countries. In addition to tracking, which begins in three days, the destination provides an insider look into Santa’s village, where users can play a number of games and meet interesting elves while exploring a plethora of fun activities.

Pic.: A screenshot from the www.google.com/santatracker page

«Santa’s dashboard—featuring the latest and greatest in Google Maps technology and sleigh engineering—will allow you to follow his progress around the world, and also learn a little about some of his stops along the way,” says the website. The first Santa’s stop is scheduled for 2 p.m. PST on Christmas Eve, and it will be mapped on the Google Santa Dashboard too. The audience will have all the Google Maps and Google Earth-based statistics about the character’s travel including his current location, next stop, time in seconds left until he leaves for another location, and the number of Christmas gifts, which have already been delivered.

For Google, it’s the first Santa’s around-the-world sleigh ride tracking of their own—for the previous five years, they had been collaborating with the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) to map the Christmas man travels (this year, NORAD partners with Bing).