Google Crowdsources Map Editing

An anonymous reader notes that Google now makes it possible to edit the map location designated by (almost) any address. Registered Google users in the US, Australia, and New Zealand can move incorrect markers for their homes or businesses to the correct locations. Access to some listings is restricted — hospitals, government buildings, and businesses whose listings have been claimed through Google's Local Business Center. In addition, moving a place marker more than 200 yards (or 200 meters) from its original location requires a moderator's approval before the change shows up on the map. Once a marker has been moved, a "Show Original" link will direct users to the original location.

Comments

with great power comes great responsibility

[User 956]

Registered Google users in the US, Australia, and New Zealand can move incorrect markers for their homes or businesses to the correct locations.

That's great, but what about moving correct markers to an incorrect location? Or the location of a competitor to the address of the local hog farm?

Re:Crap.

[calebt3]

Move the border 200 yards south?

Interesting issues it raises

[RobertM1968]

There IS a reason why Google's (and everyone else's) data is incorrect. I'm wondering if Google got their data directly, or wasted money paying for it from TeleAtlas or NavTeq or one of the other companies that gets it for free...

The US Tiger-Line Data it is based off of (SAME errors in data - I know, I've got the whole Tiger-Line set to use for comparison) clearly states in the massive 369 page "Technical Document" (well I think 369 pages is kinda large) that the data is purposefully innaccurate to ensure that it cannot be used to pinpoint the exact location of any residence to help ensure some level of privacy for each citizen.

By allowing users to correct the information, it also means the interpolative data for other addresses becomes accurate or more accurate... for instance, if my neighbor corrects his location pointer, and you look addresses on the street, even if his is in the database as an exception rule, you can easily spot the exception and re-plot the rest of the data.

For reasons of National Security (second reason cited in the Tiger-Line Docs), that also can be bad, because figuring out a pretty near exact location of sensitive areas just requires someone(s) who live on each side to correct their info.

Especially considering the data set works with 6 decimal places of latitude or longitude precision (which is about 13" give or take for most US locations... in Alaska it is far more accurate on the longitude portion at 6 decimal places)...

I'm still up in the air as to whether this ends up being a good thing or a bad thing...

Re:Interesting issues it raises

[RobertM1968]

True... though they dont hide it, it just isnt acurate, even though the information is stored in 6 decimal places...

And as for the gang checking out our site, you will find only one difference in the data compared to Google's - I dont adjust it to the left or right to make it pretty... the Tiger-Line Data specifies road direction, and whether the address is on the "left" or "right" (ie: if the road segment goes north, left addresses are on the west side). Google takes the exact same results, and moves them a couple pixels or fraction of degrees (amount determined by returned map size) tangential to the road in the appropriate direction... I may do that one day... but for now, the data I return is dead center in the middle of the road (by "choice" ie: too lazy to care at the moment - when I put up the mapping component, I will "fix" that).

Enjoy! Take the latitude and longitude, put a , between them, and drop em in Google Maps... compare that to the address you entered on my site, and you'll find that other than moving it "left" or "right" (as the data set describes it), it is otherwise identical...

Re:For those who can't read past the very first li

[Cassius Corodes]

Could you incrementally move a marker outside the 200m zone?

Re:Add missing data

[slagheap]

Google mostly uses NAVTEQ data for maps.google.com (they seem to use TeleAtlas when it's an embedded map).

For NAVTEQ data, you can use their Map Reporter to submit information. Once they get around to [1] incorporating the new data, it may then take another few months to filter back to Google and all their other customers.

[1] My street (built circa 2000) is missing from NAVTEQ, so I submitted a report describing the street, and all the house numbers about a month ago. It doesn't seem like anybody there has looked at it yet though.

Real estate records would have been better

[Animats]

It would have been better if they tied the map data to real estate ownership records. Much of that data is available in machine-readable form. It would be cool, and useful, to zoom in and see the property lines. Displaying the ownership information would be even better. It's a public record, after all.

Or if they recognized house numbers in the imagery taken by the StreetView truck.

meter == yard?

[El_Muerte_TDS]

In addition, moving a place marker more than 200 yards (or 200 meters) from its original location requires a moderator's approval before the change shows up on the map.

In that case I would move markers by 200 meters, it gives you 18 yards more power.
I assume that you can move a marker only once, so that you can't keep moving markers 10 times in a row to move it 2000 yards (or 2km).
I foresee edit wars, markers that move constantly in a radius of 200 yards (or 200 meters).
And how would a moderator know if the edit >200 yards (or >200 meters) is correct or not? Maybe the company moved to a different building and google's info isn't up to date yet.

Re:Crap.

[RealGrouchy]

Move the border 200 yards south? Actually, they're already doing that, but in the other direction.

- RG>