This is not a feature, Google

[brynndragon]

You know how, when you make a typo in Google and it auto-redirects, it actively tells you it is doing so ("Showing results for $new_search. Search instead for $original_search")?

Google Maps does not tell you it is redirecting. At all.

It will gladly give you a completely different town than the one you asked for, and the only warning it has done so is giving the new town in tiny font underneath the street name, the same as if that's what you'd typed in. There wasn't even a "Did you mean. . . ?", much less a "Showing $different_town" or a "Could not find $original_address".

This is how I ended up in Brookline last night, having asked to go to Brighton. I am not the only person who had that problem either.

(I'd tell Google about this problem, but my Google-fu fails to tell me how to do so. Ironically enough.)

ETA: An example of this behavior: 52 Brook Street Brighton, MA 02135 - try copy-pastaing that address into Google Maps and you'll see what I'm talking about.

Comments

[ellyfialy.livejournal.com]

Boo! I don't want to have to be paranoid about Google maps and bad directions. :(

[cos]

Google has always given bad directions around Boston. It's been getting a lot better. Up until a couple of years ago I found it to be pretty much worthless in the Boston area, even when it did happen to get the right address (which, in the city of Boston itself, was a crapshoot). These days, it's right more often than not. But I still would never trust it without a lot of double-checking, and comparing against directions a human has written or told me.

[jadasc.livejournal.com]

This happened to me just this morning! I asked for directions to one dentist and it directed me to a sponsored advertiser instead.

[benndragon.livejournal.com]

That's even worse! If that had happened to me, without knowing it can happen with plain addresses too, I'd be getting suspicious of a profit motive. Do you mind sharing what you typed into the bar so I can see that form of broken?

[jadasc.livejournal.com]

What I typed was "Tufts Dental, 1 Kneeland Street, Boston, MA." This was into my iPad's Google Maps app; I didn't have any trouble doing it on my desktop machine.

[tober.livejournal.com]

FWIW... I don't disagree with you in that they should make it much more obvious when they give you an address that isn't a pretty exact[1] match for what you typed but it does seem like you had the street name wrong - I am pretty sure the place you were trying to get to was 52 Brooks St. Mapquest has better behavior than google in this case, if you ask Mapquest for 52 Brook St in Brighton, you get 52 Brooks St (not 52 Brook St in Brookline) and also "We did not find the exact location you entered" although the way in which it presents that text is a bit subtle... but at least it's there. I also tried bing maps and they give the same answer as mapquest does but, like google, don't tell you that what they gave you didn't match what you asked for.

[1] The matching could be a little fuzzy but not too fuzzy. For example, if you ask for "25 First St" and it gives "25 1st St" or vice-versa, it probably shouldn't warn. There are other cases where it would probably have to warn even when the address is perfectly right, e.g. if you say "Chestnut Hill" and the address is in Newton, Brookline, or Boston but within the right boundaries.

[benndragon.livejournal.com]

I like the fact that Google search always warns, and the warning is not obtrusive yet it very obvious. I'd be completely fine with that even for something that should be obvious - Google of all companies should understand that obvious isn't always.

But the thing that gets me is they've solved this exact problem with Search already, and it's far, fr less important there than it is with Maps - extra mouse clicks are not the same as driving across town. Apparently no one in their Cambridge office goes to Brighton. . .

[roamin-umpire.livejournal.com]

Weird. That's the sort of behavior I've come to expect when the address I type is actually in the next town over, but I've yet to hit it when the address does in fact exist in the town I entered.

Question: I noticed that there is a Brooks Street in Brighton; I can't easily find a Brook Street. Could that have been the problem?

[benndragon.livejournal.com]

Yes, it turns out the invitation left out the "s" at the end of the street name. But I had no way of knowing that until I actually got to the proper destination from Brookline. (In fact I had to double-check this morning, because I hadn't noticed last night that there was a difference)

[glenmarshall.livejournal.com]

Strange behavior. I often just enter the street address and zip, but even if I do that I wind-up in Brookline on the map. Only when I enter the zip code by itself do I wind-up in Brighton. I guess Google prioritizes finding nearby towns over spell-checking street names within a specified town.

[benndragon.livejournal.com]

You'd think the algorithm could easily check the town name against the zip code, see they match, and decide the typo is elsewhere. Or maybe Google just hates Brighton ;P.

[glenmarshall.livejournal.com]

For some odd reason, the lyrics to the Anti-Nowhere League's "So What" keep popping into my head. It starts:

Well I've been to Hastings
And I've been to Brighton
I've been to Eastbourne too
So what, so what...

:-)

[benndragon.livejournal.com]

It's almost like the New England moniker has some meaning! ;P

(When I type my address for driving directions into Google Maps, it auto-fills it with Cambridge, England ever time. Even though I'm driving to somewhere in Massachusetts. Their mapping algorithms in general need work. . .)

[randysmith]

(I'd tell Google about this problem, but my Google-fu fails to tell me how to do so. Ironically enough.)

Gear Icon in upper right hand corner -> Map Help -> One of the several links about problems. Of course, when I was reading through those links, it called my attention to the very small "report a problem" link in the bottom right hand corner of the original map. There's a feature request option mention somewhere along the help path too.

[benndragon.livejournal.com]

The "Report a Problem" link is mildly misleading - I initially thought it was only about reporting inaccuracies in the map itself, not problems using Google Maps. Hopefully using the "Other" option means they'll send it to the right person after all.

ETA: BTW, Suggest a Feature only lets you select from a pre-existing list. Again, rather misleading. They need to hire an English major over there.

[tober.livejournal.com]

I was inspired by this post to see if I could find some more egregious examples of similar behavior and I've come up with at least one that I regard as a doozy. Try "125 Cambridge St, Brighton, MA" in Google Maps and you'll get redirected to 125 Allston St in Cambridge[1], which is ridiculous. There are (at least) three Cambridge Streets in Boston - one in Boston proper, one in Charlestown, and one in Allston/Brighton (it runs through both). Number 125 on the Allston/Brighton Cambridge St is technically in Allston, not Brighton... but a reasonable person asking for 125 Cambridge St in Brighton would want number 125 on the Allston/Brighton Cambridge St and not anywhere on either of the other two Boston Cambridge Streets, never mind Allston Street (or really any other street) in Cambridge. Seems like google maps takes way too many liberties with loose matching including allowing for transposition of the street and municipality. Seems like it also believes that "Allston" is a (weak) synonym for "Brighton" but it either believes that only applies to street names and not municipal ones (totally backwards) or it prefers it for street names (weird). At the same time, it does not seem to (as in your case with Brook vs. Brooks) account well for typos or minor spelling variations of which it is not explicitly aware.

[1] It did offer me alternatives in this case but its best guess is really, I think, not even plausible

[benndragon.livejournal.com]

I think Boston just seriously fucks with Google Maps' searching algorithm, which kinda makes sense because Boston is completely organic with lots of street name repetition and very slight variation, as well as having that little quirk of streets named for the town they go to.

I'm still confused why no one in their Cambridge office has ever beaten them about the head for this though.

[tober.livejournal.com]

Certainly you're right though now that I'm thinking about it, one thing that rather worries me is the following - getting around Boston and immediate environs (without getting lost) has, for a very long time, taken considerable local knowledge. This is an important factor in the speed of emergency response and I think that in the past (and still to a considerable extent) firefighters, police officers, ambulance drivers etc and their dispatchers relied heavily on good personal local knowledge - I'm sure they have all had ready access to (paper) maps for a long time but probably in general they seldom had to use them. I can't help but wonder whether today increasing reliance on tools like google maps (emergency responders perhaps don't use it but they probably have similar tools that are customized for their industry) is replacing this local knowledge and whether in confusing-to-navigate places like Boston this may actually make emergency response worse rather than better.

I know that as enhanced 911 (a feature that automatically gives the 911 dispatcher the street address of the calling phone - which of course gets all kinds of messed with by the fact that increasingly people don't have landlines and address-locating mobile phones is somewhat iffy business even when the phone contains a GPS receiver... but I digress) was being implemented in the 1990s, states and municipalities were strongly encouraged to do the following two things:
- Develop electronic databases that accurately reflect the physical location of every address on every street
- Change street names as necessary so there would be no duplicate street names in the same municipality

Boston has probably done the former quite well by now but the latter seems like an "ain't never gonna happen."

[benndragon.livejournal.com]

While GPS and online driving directions will eventually get you to where you're going, it won't will give you the sort of local knowledge needed to get there quickly (even if it does, someday, explain which lane you want to be in at intersections around here ;P). That skill is still very well used by ambulance drivers and the like, and furthermore is obviously a needed skill to anyone who tries to get around here. So I'm not worried about the skillset atrophying in those who need it.

[digitalsidhe.livejournal.com]

If hadn't previously lived in Concord, Mass., I would be looking at your comment and thinking, "Holy crap, New England Streets are completely insane! How the hell does anyone find anything around there?"

Instead, I'm fascinated by thie analysis of exactly how New England tends to confuse Google... and the back of my mind is sort of chuckling a bit and thinking, "Heh, yeah, I suppose that could be sort of confusing for an outsider..."

Say, do people around there still rely on those fabulous ABC Map and Road Atlases?

[benndragon.livejournal.com]

Yes, this is one place where local knowledge is really local, as tober pointed out. I actually found myself wishing that someone had given me directions according to where something used to be yesterday, because then I would have immediately known where I was going. (Although when they figured out to give me directions by where the Dunkies was, that's when I knew where to go.)

Many gas stations do indeed still have those maps, I just haven't had the need to grab one since my car was stolen last year and there wasn't a nearby gas station when we got to the wrong place. I should get one soon though :).