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. :(

[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.

[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.

[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?

[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.

[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.

[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