OP-ED COLUMN
By Stingray
Robots are fallible. I’m betting every person who has ever used an online map service has at some time become lost, confused or forced to “maneuver a legal U-turn” as a result of misinformation from computerized directions.
Don’t get me wrong. Compared to a clumsy physical map that’s printed maybe once a year, impossible to fold and doesn’t give you turn by turn directions, Web directions are a no-brainer. Online maps are free, customizable and some even have GPS mobile-phone capabilities.
But we get spoiled, don’t we? Online maps don’t always take into account highway repairs, new roads or street name changes. The robot creating your directions often tells drivers to turn the wrong way down a one-way road, through a cornfield or directs us to exits and “unnamed streets” that don’t exist.
This is why most people have a favorite go-to, as well as a mortal enemy, when it comes to the bevy of free map services on the Web, including Google Maps, MapQuest, Yahoo Maps, MapBlast, Maps.com, Expedia Maps and MSN MapPoint.
Why is the information so terrible? Well, it’s a big world.
Most sites locate addresses through a process known as geocoding, which assigns a latitude-longitude coordinate to each address. According to an article in Wired Magazine, there are three basic methods of calculating a geocode: address interpolation, intersection matching and ZIP codes. Address interpolation will fail in certain cases, such as when an address is ambiguous or new. If that happens, the program will attempt to assign coordinates to an address based on the ZIP code. That’s why my mom’s house in rural Iowa exists only within a 50 mile radius of her local post office.
MapQuest encourages users to report driving direction inaccuracies and missing data, such as address errors and new roads, but they only update their data every three months. This is where Google Maps is changing the game. It’s empowering you, the user, to help shape its data.
Ever wanted to fix where your house appears on a map? Click here. If you search for a coffee house you know and see that Google Maps shows it in the wrong location, you can move it to the right spot. This helps the rest of the world see and use accurate information in Google Maps. As long as you don’t adjust the markers by more than 200 meters, changes take place immediately.
Just like how Wikipedia applies the collective wisdom of many over the opinion of one, Google Map has opened its data to crowd-sourcing, where the collective is smarter than the machine.
A recent Google Maps announcement included the ability to add, edit or delete a destination itself, so if a new place opens in your neighborhood or an old favorite changes its location, you can make the change and it will be reflected immediately. “Missing your neighborhood soccer field? A favorite monument downtown? A newly opened clothing store? It’s your world… you know best what needs to be mapped.”
To help protect accuracy, you’ll still be able to see the original listing information along with the history of changes made. Google said that once a listing has been claimed by a business owner it cannot be edited, which should give businesses both comfort and an incentive to claim and correct their listings.
Here are two short videos that explain just how easy it is to edit these details. Remember, this is only the beginning. Enabling crowd-sourcing for projects like online maps is only the start of a whole new way of thinking about shaping and delivering large amounts of variable data.
Meanwhile, a few takeaways for you: Is your house accurately reflected on Google Maps? Who is editing your client’s business profiles? Are they accurate?
Robots may be fallible, but humans are smart, adaptive, messy, emotional creatures. Given the right tools, they can change the world (within 200 meters).