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Google Maps should change the way that edits work. My experience suggests the current approach is to require independent verification, via volunteers, of too ma
by murphyslab 3y ago
Google Maps should change the way that edits work. My experience suggests the current approach is to require independent verification, via volunteers, of too many user edits.
If I were to update the hours of a local business with a photo, that gets addressed within a couple hours, since the photo offers a form of verification. But to correct the location of a feature often takes far longer.
A pharmacy in my community had its location wrongly recorded in Google Maps, leading to people trying to drive through a very wrong route. The pharmacists himself had tried and couldn't change his business' location. I made the edit (as a "level 7 guide" for what it's worth) and even then it required another 50 days before it was verified. In that case, it was likely awaiting another user to verify.
I checked the map today while thinking about it: Ten months later, the marker has been moved back, to the incorrect location!
I fixed the pharmacy location because Google Maps was hurting my pharmacist, a good guy with a small business that I like. But to go out of my way to verify other edits, I'm not quite sure what the motivation is. Google should pay users -- offer some small remuneration -- for correct edits and for verification of edits. They already offer similar payment for information in other contexts: offering Google Play credits with their Google Rewards survey platform. Why not employ that on Google Maps, which is earning them around $5B/year?
Another option might be to trust (then verify) for users who have a history of valid edits.
- jedberg 3y agoIf I had to take a wild guess, your pharmacist's business is probably incorporated at the old address, and they haven't updated their incorporation documents. Google periodically pulls those from public records, and most likely this is why the marker moved back.
- murphyslab 3y agoThat's possible, however I'm not changing the address, I'm changing the position of the marker on the map by 70 metres. Google regularly tweaks marker coordinates, in order to provide better driving directions, without changing the address. Additionally, the wrong location, where the marker has reverted to, does not correspond to a building structure, rather it's in the middle of a greenspace. I've illustrated it here: https://i.imgur.com/kvYePAZ.png https://i.imgur.com/kvYePAZ.png All of the other markers I've included in the diagram match what is shown on Google Maps; they are correctly positioned at the structure where the organization is located. One oddity of the location is that it is like a campus, hence all of the buildings share the same street address, but with different unit numbers (e.g. 9999 Hacker Road #5 and 9999 Hacker Road #8).
- astrange 3y agoThis sometimes causes businesses to show up on the map at their owners' house instead of the actual location. Or a restaurant's name will change to Obscure Name Pty Ltd LLC Co Inc because that's the name of their holding company. The last one happens unusually often in Australia I feel like, maybe because people outside the country don't know how to validate the data.
- binkHN 3y agoYeah. It's frustrating. I'm Level 7 as well (I use Google Maps to help me remember if I liked a particular restaurant or not) and it took me 7 months to get my new home address (new construction) into the system and I'm not certain if my edits were even responsible. So, for 7 months, deliveries were problematic because "everyone" used Google Maps and my house didn't exit.
- spondylosaurus 3y agoIIRC Waze supports almost exactly what you're describing. Which is kind of ironic since Waze is owned by Google.