Close

Close
Special Announcement
Newsletter Sign Up
Calendar
Back March '10 Forward
Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
8 9 10 11 12 13 14
15 16 17 18 19 20 21
22 23 24 25 26 27 28
29 30 31        
Syndicate This Blog
Top Referers
manomano.livejournal.com (113)
www.lizardtech.com (79)
www.thegisforum.com (67)
planetgs.com (63)
myteams.dot.ga.gov (31)
Our Points
Thursday, December 17. 2009

Update: Some Updates on Google Maps Data Issues

Update: On 12/15/09 Google sent an e-mail confirming the error I found corrected 12/7/09. So, while Google is not implementing corrections within 30 days (but is close), there's also a delay in communicating the corrections to the submitters.


---- original post 12/7/09 ------

The Chicago Tribune runs down the litany of odd and old names of regions and Points of Interest in the Windy City. The best comment suggests the author be a grown up and buy a map from (local company) Rand McNally. I continue to be amazed that Google has not received more flack of these and other oddities.

- via @storm72

On another matter, it took me two tries to get Google's attention regarding the misgeocoding of my street (original post). On Oct 23 I sent in a second "problem report." On Oct 25 I received this confirmation:

Hi ,

Your Google Maps problem report has been reviewed, and you were right! We'll update the map within a month and email you when you can see the change.

Report history
Problem ID: E176-3579-9E42-682D

Your report: Not a one way street. Also geocoding is backwards.
--
Thanks for your help,
The Google Maps team


I gave Google a few extra days in December and the geocoding was still wrong yesterday (I used a MapQuest link to send a friend a map to my house). But today, it's fixed, though I've not been notified of the fix. It seems in my case at least Google is not keeping up with its "one month to fix" promise. Still, it's nice to have my house at the bottom of the hill instead of the top!
Posted by Adena Schutzberg in Google at 06:00 | Comments (7) | Trackbacks (0) | Bookmark and Share

Trackbacks
Trackback specific URI for this entry

No Trackbacks

Comments
Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)

I have used the "Report a problem" link several times to report errors to Google. I have not received a single notification of any corrections. Here is one example of an error I reported on October 13th: http://bit.ly/7WWCR0.

The French islands of St.Pierre and Miquelon of the south-east coast of Newfoundland. The coastline of the islands is missing and the roads appear in the ocean!!

It seems to me that Google does not take map errors as seriously in Canada as it does in the US. The "Report a problem" link is only visible at zoom levels 5 and 6. In the US the link is visible at zoom levels 5 to 19.
#1 Bernie Connors (Link) on 2009-12-07 07:31 (Reply)
Hi Bernie. Google is still using Tele Atlas data in Canada so they don't control the map updates.
#1.1 Marc on 2009-12-08 08:43 (Reply)
Coincidentally, I just noticed (Dec. 10, 2009) that the Islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon are now properly represented on Google Maps. Somebody made a correction.
#1.1.1 Bernie Connors (Link) on 2009-12-10 11:26 (Reply)
Wow. I never knew there was a direct correlation between purchasing paper maps and maturity. Go figure.
#2 Terry (Link) on 2009-12-07 07:55 (Reply)
Here's a blog post of someone who received a reply (albeit, not quite within the 30 days):
http://www.maploser.com/?p=236
#3 AdamD (Link) on 2009-12-07 12:31 (Reply)
Michael Dobson (former VP at Rand McNally and a noted consultant on location-based services) addresses this problem in some depth in his blog. See: http://blog.telemapics.com/?p=218

Personally, I have a strong feeling that there are priorities at work that reflect market size. E.g., a report from Chicago about an error is going to be addressed much sooner than one from Florence, OR (population just under 10K).
#4 Duane Marble on 2009-12-17 12:33 (Reply)
As an after thought, you might like to look at the Pacific Northwest earthquake site at http://www.pnsn.org/req2/

The notice about errors in Google maps has now been posted for some weeks.
#4.1 Duane Marble on 2009-12-17 19:58 (Reply)

Add Comment

Enclosing asterisks marks text as bold (*word*), underscore are made via _word_.
Standard emoticons like :-) and ;-) are converted to images.
E-Mail addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for E-Mail notifications

To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly.
CAPTCHA
    
  
 
Advertisers
Polls
What do you think of this blog's "tidbits" articles that provide roundups of stories on a theme?
Love them, read them all.
Always read the ones in my area(s) of interest.
I skip them.
Didn't realize you did that!

Archives
Comments
Archie Belaney about Illinois Grant Tracker Uses ESRI for Data Management and Google Maps for Visualization
March 20
Google Maps with a simple tabular [...]


Archie Belaney about Kundra: Geospatial One-Stop One of Four Projects of Interest to OMB
March 19
Exactly. striking the balance is the [...]


reidi about "Opensource GIS saves companies thousands"
March 19
The author implies that MapServer and [...]


Adena Schutzberg about Slightly Off Topic: Link Bait Hitting Geo: Why?
March 19
I heard about that on On the Media. [...]


atanas entchev about Slightly Off Topic: Link Bait Hitting Geo: Why?
March 19
TIME magazine ran a story that might [...]


marshall, who despises writing metadata but does it anyway about Kundra: Geospatial One-Stop One of Four Projects of Interest to OMB
March 19
Making fed agencies write metadata is no [...]


Archie Belaney about "Opensource GIS saves companies thousands"
March 18
Open Source by itself doesn't save [...]


Amazon Recommendations