the end of a perfect record

[cellio]

Google Maps almost failed me this morning. That's never happened before. Those "M" guys used to get things wrong so much that I couldn't rely on them at all; they even managed to leave out a major state road once, telling me that I could exit the interstate and get onto such-and-such road that was miles and miles away. And those "Y" guys led me on some merry romps a couple times. But Google Maps had always given me what I needed with a smile and useful photos besides.

This morning I had to run an errand in Wilkinsburg before work. I don't particularly know the wilds of Wilkinsburg, but it's not the land of unnamed dirt roads or anything like that. I was a little surprised that Google's directions didn't actually have me turn onto the street named in the address, but a street number of "xxx02" is likely to be at a corner, so that seemed ok. So, armed with directions and Street View of the key intersections I didn't already know (Street View has made my life so much easier in this land of sometimes-inadequate road signs), I headed off... and at the end of the directions found myself at the end of a road facing an iron gate. Oops.

So I called my destination, told them where I was, and asked how to recover. How far was I from such-and-such road? Sorry, not from around here -- never heard of such-and-such road. Ok, I should go back to other-such-and-such road and... wait, never encountered that one on my way here. We went back and forth a couple times and I said I guessed I was going to have to reschedule and get better directions. I repeated what I had said at the beginning of the conversation: I was at the end of such-and-such road facing an iron gate with an "authorized personnel only" sign and no other markings.

Wait, the guy said, is it a blue sign? Yup. Could I see a white building beyond the gate? Yup. He told me to wait. A couple minutes later somebody came to open the back gate so I could drive in. Weird!

So it worked out in the end (costing me 10 minutes or so), but it was very puzzling.

Comments

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

It is possible to report such errors to Google Maps. It would probably carry more weight if you simultaneously wrote to the place you were trying to reach and had them complain about it too.

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

I can't read the text running up the side of your userpic; I think it's suffered from pixelation in reduction. What's it say?

[eub.livejournal.com]

Oh, I assure you Google Maps runs into all kinds of problems all the time, we just try to find them and fix them before they go live, or before they affect anyone, or before they affect too many queries too severely...

I can't say if it applies to your case (would you be willing to post the address in question?), but one possibility is if you're routing to a destination that's an area (rather than a point), and if the data may not say where the driveway is. In which case it might decide to get you as close as it can, on the road network, to the center of the area. And possibly the back service road was the road that got closest to that.

Depending on the exact issue, it may be fixable most quickly by:
1) search for the place.
If the marker looks like it is showing the type of problem described above,
2) click on the marker to open the little dialog window
3) from the "More" dropdown, select "Move marker"
4) and drag it to the point it would have been good to drive to.

(Or you can use the "Report a problem" at the very very bottom of the directions, but that's more involved.)

[eub.livejournal.com]

... intermittently reproduce. Extra bleah.

[grouchyoldcoot.livejournal.com]

On the way back from Gulf Wars I asked Google Maps for a route to 'New Orleans Intl Airport' and it cheerfully delivered one- but it turned out to be a map to just 'New Orleans'. That is, it delivered us to Downtown. Giving the airport's proper name ('Louis Armstrong') produced the right result. I guess I should try to reproduce it; at the time I was too busy panicking about missing my plane to take good notes.