Google Maps Adds Error Reporting
Google Maps adds error reporting — clicking on “report a problem” at the bottom right of the map opens a dialogue where you can place a pushpin and describe the problem. “Once we’ve received your edit or suggestion we’ll confirm it with other users, data sources, or imagery. We hope to resolve each edit within a month. If you submit your email address, we’ll even keep you posted on our progress,” says Google LatLong. This is a vast improvement: until today, if you found an error on an online map — and I found a bunch of them locally when Google switched its North American mapping data from Navteq to Tele Atlas a year ago — the only thing you could do was report the error to the mapping data provider. This is much handier; I’ve already reported a bunch of the errors I pointed out last year.
Previously: Google Switches to Tele Atlas, Errors Proliferate; More on Tele Atlas and Google; How to Report Map Errors.
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I have tried to use this “new” error reporting tool a few times, but have never gotten a response or a fix. Is there a “secret”? ;^) I live in a townhouse complex, and my street name is not on the map - which makes it very hard to create directions that start from a non-existent location. ;^) I have printed out both the map view and the satellite view, corrected the map, and scanned it into my system. But there’s no way to add a .jpg or .pdf to the reporting tool form.
Assuming the info on a Google map was provided by a city agency somewhere along the way, am I better off to go to the city and get them to correct their data? Them hopefully, one of these years, Google will re-collect the data and this will get fixed.
October 17, 2009 at 4:00 PM
I haven’t heard anything back yet either, but we’re still a long way from the month they said they hoped to respond within. (Which is still better than the error-reporting systems from the mapping data providers.) I’d also imagine that the launch of this service has unleashed an onslaught of error reports, creating quite the backlog.
October 17, 2009 at 5:09 PM