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Street address errors in Google Maps

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Re: Street address errors in Google Maps

#11

Post by matheusmoreira »

rs186 wrote: post #8

Not sure it's related, but recently I tried to ask Google maps to find a way to a train station, and it confidently set the destination to the exit of a nearby highway. Yes, I double checked that I was using driving navigation, and it expected me to stop the car in the middle of the traffic. And I have no idea what to do about this. P.S. I never had good experience with reporting errors. Sometimes they are rejected d…

The correct way to report errors to Google is to publicly blog about it until it reaches the HN front page and some Google insider sees it.

Re: Street address errors in Google Maps

#12

Post by swatcoder »

brucedawson wrote: post #2

Google Maps' database contains nonsensically placed addresses of non-existent buildings. Worse, however, is that it also contains entries for real buildings that are mapped blocks or kilometers away from their actual location, leading to real-life consequences. After two weeks of failing to fix the most significant error that I found I decided to blog about the issue in hopes of getting the attention of the Google Ma…

Really cool and thorough work! Thanks for sharing!

My own first intuition is that it's not actually a data problem at all, and that "Google Maps has no concept of.." might simply reflect the ongoing, enshittening, transition from structured "concepts" to ML "vibes" for products like Google's.

It's not that the underlying maps data store has the addresses wrong, but there's a layer between the input field and the result generator that's statistically deciding you mean something besides what you explicitly enterred and is giving you a route to a silently "corrected" address.

We've seen that happening more and more in Search for years, silently ignoring keywords and directives without a "did you mean" callout, and it would seem natural for some product owner to be pushing an equivalent initiative in Maps. Aggregate metrics move the right way, so the company is happy, but of course the actual product experience sees a fractal failure pattern that nobody can quite address but makes results less and less reliable.

I'd love to be wrong, though, as I think this would be a terrible advent for something that can be life-critical like a popular mapping tool.

Re: Street address errors in Google Maps

#13

Post by hu3 »

7e wrote: post #3

Google Maps has declined remarkably two or three years. It’s now an ML-brained mess. Like the rest of Google. Apple Maps is actually better now! That’s incredible.

I don't recall last time Google Maps made a mistake for me. I'm sure it has messy data.

I don't envy developers that have to work with geography or timezones. And Google Map devs have to work with both. Ouch.

Re: Street address errors in Google Maps

#14

Post by ForOldHack »

bombcar wrote: post #4

I wonder if trying to support strange international address styles (like cities where the numbers on the street are in order of building permit issued, not ordinal from a center point) and/or trying to scan imagery for addresses is confusing it. The fact it gets the street wrong indicates a tokenization issue somewhere. Any evidence it happens to non-numeric streets like Main Street or Martin Luther Blvd, or is it on…

I was on Seoul for 18 months, and despite significant study, I have, never been able to decode their system despite at least 100 requests for some insights.

Re: Street address errors in Google Maps

#15

Post by netsharc »

7e wrote: post #3

Google Maps has declined remarkably two or three years. It’s now an ML-brained mess. Like the rest of Google. Apple Maps is actually better now! That’s incredible.

Same here... around 2-3 years ago the driving route out of my neighborhood changed to always be down a set of (human-only) stairs. After a while it did change back, but it's not trustworthy anymore.

Soon we can tell the younger generations that when we were young, Google was almost magic, it could find the most obscure stuff.. nowadays, not so much.

Re: Street address errors in Google Maps

#16

Post by [deleted] »

brucedawson wrote: post #2

Google Maps' database contains nonsensically placed addresses of non-existent buildings. Worse, however, is that it also contains entries for real buildings that are mapped blocks or kilometers away from their actual location, leading to real-life consequences. After two weeks of failing to fix the most significant error that I found I decided to blog about the issue in hopes of getting the attention of the Google Ma…

[deleted]

Re: Street address errors in Google Maps

#17

Post by aethr »

In the logistics industry the commonly held wisdom is that there really isn't any accepted system for "how street addresses work". Different countries have completely different systems, and even within a country there are often many different conventions.

The thing that really matters in delivery is whether the address on the consignment has enough information for an operator to complete the next leg. By the time an item makes it to the region where the delivery address is situated, the local operators usually have enough understanding of the local system to get the item to its destination.

Even if the city in the article has a well defined system, it's probably not feasible for a global product like Google Maps to understand and encode every regional system. This is the problem that geocoding schemes (what3words, etc) are meant to solve, creating a single system that applies globally. But like many "rational" systems that attempt to replace entrenched practices, they struggle to gain traction.

Re: Street address errors in Google Maps

#18

Post by sadeshmukh »

7e wrote: post #3

Google Maps has declined remarkably two or three years. It’s now an ML-brained mess. Like the rest of Google. Apple Maps is actually better now! That’s incredible.

What decline are you noticing? I don't see how it has become any more of an "ML-brained mess".

Re: Street address errors in Google Maps

#19

Post by cozzyd »

I've noticed some really strange lapses in transit directions as well, though there it might be more directly blamed on the source.

Confusingly, for example, Google thinks it sometimes takes like 20 minutes for the metra electric to go from Van Buren to millennium stations (a distance of perhaps half a mile). What I believe is happening is it's using the departure time of the train from millennium station (it will layover for 15 minutes or so, presumably) as the arrival time.

Re: Street address errors in Google Maps

#20

Post by Roguelazer »

7e wrote: post #3

Google Maps has declined remarkably two or three years. It’s now an ML-brained mess. Like the rest of Google. Apple Maps is actually better now! That’s incredible.

It's been a bit more than that; about four years ago they started using machine-analyzed satellite photos to override street geometry in my neighborhood and decided that a parking lot is a through street; since then, nobody who uses Google Maps can get to my house because Google Maps directs them to drive down that parking lot (which has a brick wall in it and is not a through street). I've filed this as a data issue maybe a half-dozen times and it gets fixed and then breaks again a couple of months later in the exact same way. Drives me crazy. OpenStreetMaps and Apple Maps are both correct.
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