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

[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 :).