Skips over restaurants

POI's are updated along with maps. When did you last update your maps?

its quite likely that the poi are not in the database. you can add them to favorites or make a custom poi file with icon and sound. check out extra poi editor (by turboccc) and poi loader (by Garmin)

So let me get this straight, call me dumb if you want, but the POI are the same places that are located in the category menu?

Yes, if you do a general search for all restaurants in a location what you see on the list that comes up is what is in that database. Not all businesses, etc. are listed. I am not sure how Garmin determines what to include or how it finds what to add but I know businesses and restaurants that are small and don't get included. This is the benefit of being able to add custom POIs as are found on this site. With the custom POI the POIs can be supplemented with what Garmin has missed. Or you can add them as favorites.

The internal pois are found when you touch Where to then points of interest.Custom Pois you install are found touching Where to,extras and touching custom pois last.

next question: The internal POIs are sorted by restaurants, banks, Churches and etc. The custom POIs are not. Is there a way to fix this?

POI files usually all have something in common...Such as Starbucks, Brew Pubs , shell gas stations and the list of POI files go on and on. What you'll find is many times the POI files are more current than what is on your Garmin. Even when you update your maps those updates are likely 6 months to a year old. Since many business will open or close in this time frame I usually use a POI file if I can.
Places that you use or go to can be saved as favorites and then your favorites can be saved in any named file you want as you can make up your own.

Custom POIs can be sorted and filed any way you want them.

I, myself, have them sorted by a Food category (about 14 different restaurant chains), Gas Category (Truck Stops & a couple of major gas chains), Rest Area Category (Canada & US), and then a number of individual categories like Amtrak stations, cruise ports, special VIA points I want, Time Zone changes etc, etc.

Is there a way to merge these into the factory catagories?

This is how I typically use my GPS. Lets say for example I want to find the nearest Gas station. I click “Where To?”

http://flic.kr/p/98dTQT

Then I click “Food, Lodging”

http://flic.kr/p/98h3M9

Then “Fuel”

http://flic.kr/p/98h3Nq

Then it shows me a list of all the Fuel stations that are close by my location.

http://flic.kr/p/98dTVB

I understand that. My problem is that it does not show every one. I know for sure that there is a “Shell” gas station down the street.

How do I merge my custom POI files into the same categories? For example: I downloaded a custom POI for all the “Shell Fuel stations”, how do I put this into the “Fuel” category?

double post

Sorry but that can't be done. You have the "built in" POI's that are part of the map data. These can not be altered except via a map update. You also have your Custom POI's which will appear under Extras - Custom POIs. You have control over these items and can update, add, delete items by running POIloader.

There is no facility to merge built in and custom POIs. You can however setup your custom POIs to "mirror" the categories of the built in ones. There are lots of threads here that explain how to do that. Here is one that will help:

http://www.poi-factory.com/node/25721

The way I read this, the OP was looking for a store in a specific chain. If there were 3 near his location, it might only show 1 or 2. I have found that the POI that comes loaded with the GPSr has always been incomplete (if not very accurate also). It was as if those POI that came pre-installed were a sample of locations, usable but incomplete. The periodic updates do improve the POI database over time, but it seems to be a task that never catches up.

The POI Factory fills the need for more accurate and complete custom POI. After finding this site, many of us have become contributors as well as users and I rarely use the manufacturer's installed POI any longer as I've found the files here are far better in most cases.

Of the lot, perhaps hotels/motels seem to be the least reliable overall as many change brand names frequently.

Merging the factory POI files with the custom POIs (Favorites) would be a nice add-on to the Nuvi. That way you could do one search for what you wanted.

I was wondering the same thing.

The 660 model is nearly ancient in GPS years. What version map are you running in the unit? The newer the map the more current the built in POI's.

Figuring out an ideal file structure and then loading a series of custom POI's (from here of course) is really the best way to go. Many times the map set of POI's is really out of date. If you look through the extensive POI's offered here you should be able to very nearly build a custom set that works for you.

It may take a few times of setting up a file structure that works but it is worth the effort.

This is so true because the chains are so huge they are a major task. I had to do my own for Choice Motels and Motel 6. The motel/ hotels might be a poi file that should be broken down in to states.

I have North America 2010 maps with the latest updates. I got it last year.

The latest map and POI update which came out around this past November is version 2011.30. Touch Tools/Settings/Map/MapInfo to determine which 2010 map version you have. A newer map may or may not have the missing businesses you're looking for but in general, newer maps will have a greater success rate when doing a search.

And if your searched businesses are still not there, see if you can find, download and install POI files from POI Factory so you can find them in Extras on your GPS as you wait for newer maps that may include the places you want to find.

If there's a specific business you're looking for, give us the business and location and we may be able to tell you if the current map includes it as a built-in POI.

I have 2010.1

Those maps were released about 1 3/4 years ago (Apr 09) which means most of the built-in POI data is probably 3-4 years old.

Garmin's internal POIs are not that reliable, even one day after updating. Often, I've followed them to only find an out of business restaurant/buffet. And as I'm headed to that out of business restaurant/buffet, I'll see some that are not showing up via Garmin's internal POIs. I'm sure that is true for gas stations as well.

Garmin sells maps/devices and building and maintaining accurate POIs without advertising compensation from those listed in the POIs is not Garmin's top priority. And Joe's gas station won't be paying Garmin $$ merely to be listed in Garmin's POI database, making it less likely that Joe's gas station will make it's way into Garmin's internal POI.

Which brings us to the POI factory. Here, the POIs are significantly more reliable than those provided by Garmin. Also, the topics that POI factory has compiled is more extensive that what Garmin provides. See http://www.poi-factory.com/poifiles/alpha

However, there is no one "all gas stations within a given geographic area" POI. If you make a few custom POIs, you'll understand why.

Your best option is to go to http://www.poi-factory.com/poifiles/alpha or http://www.poi-factory.com/taxonomy/term/24
and download all POI gas/fuel stations that you use into a single folder and then use that folder to find gas stations. (The custom POIs can be added to a single folder that you create.)

Restaurants, gas stations and hotels that are part of a chain can change names/brands every few years or simply close. Garmin map data will always be 6-12 months behind at best and likely more than a year. If it something you want to have the latest data about the POI will almost always trump the Garmin map data on a business or place.

Even if Garmin's maps were more up to date then they are now, they still wouldn't have all gas stations and restaurants recorded in a given area. You see, Garmin's POI database is just Navteq's poi database, which is incomplete due to the fact that I'm pretty sure that in order for a business to be recorded by navteq, that business has to pay Navteq some annual fee. Most businesses already pay an annual fee to be put in a phonebook (and Google maps utilizes phonebooks for their database, which is why everything can be found on Google Maps), so who would want to pay another fee on top of that so that Navteq can include them? Most small businesses won't. So the reason why you're not seeing restaurants and other businesses in your GPS that are there in your area is because they are not part of the Navteq database (and therefore not a part of Garmin's).