Google Maps Gone Crazy 4

Posted by JD 12/12/2011 at 23:00

If you trust Google maps, I think you’re crazy. Over the years, it has sent me to the wrong place numerous times.

Recently, deliveries to my home have been screwed. The only explanation that I have is because Google invented a new street name and points the correct address to the wrong houses.

Edge of a ZIP Code

Further, I live on the edge of a ZIP code. There is a Post Office for the other ZIP code about a 3 minute walk cutting through back yards from my home. My post office for the correct ZIP is about 2 miles away. This is confusing to me, since I used to be able to walk over and pick up mail. Now it is a 10 minute drive.

1234 Name+Street+Direction, City, State, ZIP

Map Errors Compared

For example, the address here has always been “Circle” and the house numbers follow all the numbers in the residential area pretty clearly. However, Google decided the address here is now “Court”, not “Circle” for some unknown reason. This must be a recent change since deliveries started being “lost” over the summer and delivered to the wrong addressed. For the last 15+ yrs, deliveries were never any issue.

  • 1234 Name Circle Direction, City, State, ZIP [Correct]
  • 1234 Name Cir Direction, City, State, ZIP [Correct]
  • 1234 Name Court Direction, City, State, ZIP [Wrong]
    Is that clear?
  1. What’s worse is Google’s Streetview points to an entirely wrong house for the correct address.
  2. Only of the incorrect Court address is used, do they point to my house.
  3. What’s even funnier, is that if I enter the close, but wrong ZIP code, then streetview displays the back of my house from a different street completely.

Thanks Google.

Yahoo Maps knows exactly the correct location and address. No confusion. If I type in “Court”, Yahoo corrects it back to “Circle”. The wrong ZIP code gets an error.

Mapquest suggested the correct address, but did not force Court into Circle. The Court marker was different from the Circle marker. Close, but not quite correct. The wrong ZIP code gets corrected too.

Bing Maps handled the correct and wrong address perfectly. The location marker on the map for both was correct. The wrong ZIP code gets an error.

I won’t hold my breadth for any corrections. I’ll try to point out to smaller delivery companies like UPS and SmartShip the error in the map data.

  1. Eric 12/13/2011 at 00:08

    You can actually edit it and suggest the correction yourself. Search for your correct address and then select “Report a Problem” or “Edit in Google Map Maker” in the lower right corner.

  2. Tyler 12/13/2011 at 00:10

    What’s your address? I’ll fix it in MapMaker.
    ;)

  3. JD 12/13/2011 at 02:22

    Sorry, I think I wasn’t clear. The bullet points are properly labeled with the correct/wrong information.

    Attempted to get it corrected twice before and again today through the Report a Problem method. Seems lots of other people are reporting similar issues with the wrong street names being displayed in Gmaps. For my situation,

    • Court is wrong
    • Cir or Circle is correct

    Google prefers Court in the street name, which actually does not exist as a valid street name. The 4 houses in the pseudo-court of the street are numbered in sequence with the other 50 homes on the Circle street. There isn’t any confusion in the street numbers.

    Sorry for the recent non-technical posts. I’ve been working on some other posts with some meat for software developers.

  4. JD 12/20/2011 at 19:16

    Got a note from google today. They agreed that google maps was wrong for my street. It is still showing up as wrong, but at least they admit the error.