How do I file a Google Maps bug report?

August 23, 2009 2:02 PM

Google Maps has my street name misspelled. How do I get them to fix it?
posted by breezeway to computers & internet (8 comments total)

Here's a contact form for the Maps support team. Good luck, I hope you get a response.
posted by synaesthetichaze at 2:10 PM on August 23

Founds this on the google forum flagged as correct. Only 5 days old.

Google Maps now gets all of their source map data from TeleAtlas. The other map data provider (NAVTEQ) supplies to Bing/Microsoft, Garmin, and others. TeleAtlas does seem to be much less up to date than NAVTEQ -- which means that Google Maps is often wrong. (A previous poster said Google Maps switched from NAVTEQ to TeleAtlas recently. That seems likely, as my entire neighborhood - which used to appear in Google Maps - has now disappeared!)

TO SUGGEST A MAP CORRECTION, you need to go to TeleAtlas (not Google):

- Their main page is here: www.teleatlas.com

- Their "map feedback" page is here: http://mapinsight.teleatlas.com/mapfeedback/index.php

It's pretty quick and easy to submit a correction request. The more corrections we all submit (and the more precise instructions we can give to TeleAtlas), the sooner Google Maps will show correct info!
posted by laptolain at 2:16 PM on August 23

There is an issue with an area right around the corner from me and I filled out the correction request with TeleAtlas months ago. Its probably been 4 months and the error is still there. Let us know if you get a better response.
posted by premortem at 2:21 PM on August 23

Thanks, I'll do both of the things suggested.
posted by breezeway at 2:22 PM on August 23

Previously, though probably a different situation.
posted by hattifattener at 2:22 PM on August 23

I did this to correct a misspelled park name in my hometown, and now none of the parks in my hometown are labeled at all on Google maps. :(
posted by ocherdraco at 3:44 PM on August 23

Back in '92 or so, I lived on a small dead-end street in Nashville. Trying to get utilities hooked up revealed that the street name was spelled differently in almost every municipal and corporate database. Turns out that there's no such thing as a definitive nomenclature for streets (notice how property deeds aren't address-based, but survey plot based?). When the street signs have one spelling, the city management has another spelling, and neither match the utility spellings, there's no absolute way to resolve this.

So it's no surprise that Google would not have a clue which one to use.
posted by yesster at 6:06 PM on August 23 [1 favorite has favorites]

AFAIK, you pay companies like NAVTEQ and TeleAtlas every time you get an updated copy of their data. Google might be a special case being such a large customer, but they are possibly doing periodic, maybe quarterly, updates of the TeleAtlas dataset. Combine Google refresh lead time with TeleAtlas update lead time, and it could certainly be months before you see a change.
posted by turbodog at 11:56 AM on August 27