Wrong information from Google Map

I use a GPSr to locate customer sites when I have a service call out of town and I've never been to them before. About a year ago I had a similar situation as the GPSr was telling me the address was about 10 miles west of the interstate when the town I was looking for was definitely 20 miles to the east. A phone call to the customer gave me directions and yes, it was about 30 miles away from where the GPSr would have taken me. They said that truckers and couriers that used GPS or web based mapping programs were always going to that other location, also a farmhouse!

While dead-on accuracy is often expected, the reality is that you should at least be able to see the front door of where you want to be. gwj was looking for a POI, I was using a street address. Feedback to the map provider, Navteq, Google, etc. would hopefully fix these glaring errors.

Since Google Earth started adding street level photos, I've been looking at them whenever available before I wander to unknown locations to see if I can visually verify what I'm looking for.

Since it is so easy to choose the Hybrid map view that shows the map overlaid on the satellite view, I always do that, just to be sure. And if you're still not sure, the Steet level view is a big help!

When building POIs I always use GeePeeEx Editor for the same reason. It has a built in Google Map viewer that lets you drag the pointer to fine tune the coordinates.

Those of us that build POI files know that often Google, Yahoo! or other providers of geocoding services can't resolve or locate an address to the street level. When that happens, they begin to "back away" and attempt to locate the city, postal code, or the county and will return a location matching the center of what it was able to resolve.

A lot of errors are caused by misspellings or alternative names of streets and areas. As an example, a main street going near my house is identified by one name, but its official name on the county records is something else. To add to the confusion, the exit off the Interstate uses the local name and not the official name.

I know for a long time that all map services (yahoo, google etc) (and this was before my gps) listed where I lived 10 miles off. They transposed the north/south addresses for our road in the county. I imagine this is more common than we think. Because our houses were the only ones for two miles, not very many people would have known of the mistake.

Daniel