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Google Crowdsources Map Editing
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Nov 20, 2007 10:01 PM
from the don't-do-your-home-address-first dept.
from the don't-do-your-home-address-first dept.
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.
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Submission: Users can edit Google Maps locations, wiki-style by Anonymous Coward
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I just fixed the one for my new house (Score:5, Funny)
-- Hillary
Support openstreetmap instead... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Support openstreetmap instead... (Score:4, Informative)
Why help any of them? The US data is FREE anyway... 99% of the people who pay for the data just dont realize that.
Parent
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Sorry for being US centric in that last post... I can definitely see helping them in non-US areas.
As for US areas, I am baffled that they have no data for anywhere in my area (30 minutes from NYC in a major suburb) - well, to be truthful, they have an outline of the geography (land and water boundary line) - but thats it... especially since it is free, and doesnt take too long (for them) to import all 70GB of it into a database... for us to feed the data through their web server would take months...
So,
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Are you referring to TIGER/LINE data? Yes, that's free but companies such as Navteq and TeleAtlas have better quality/more up-to-date data. 99% of people who pay for it care about accuracy.
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Really? More up to date? Sorry, but it isn't more up to date... the government doesn't give them a special release of it.
More accurate? In some instances - due to the already mentioned online correction tools that their customers can use to update incorrect info...
And from testing against that data I can tell you, those "corrections" (assuming they are accurate) make up a very small percent of the data. As of this day, my road, (and houses on it) built in 1940, in a county with 3 million people, still is
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If you think that Tiger data is just as good as what you can get from TeleAtlas and NavTeq-- then you obviously haven't seen these datasets. I have. No commercial GPS unit vendor, or map web service uses Tiger data because it sucks.
Tiger doesn't contain sign data. It doesn't describe one-way roads or turn restrictions. It doesn't include form-of-way information. It doesn't tell you how large roads are. It doesn't offer a fully conneted road network. And on, and on...
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Suggestion (Score:5, Funny)
Other map crowdsourcing tools (Score:5, Informative)
Interesting issues it raises (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
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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 the
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Interesting that the inaccuracies are by design.
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Actually, Google seems to get their data from a variety of sources, NavTeq being one of them... trying out different zoom levels and different locations will show you different "contributors" for the data that Google uses.
For instance, try New York, NY... you will see the copyright statement says "Google Imagery, NASA, TerraMetrics, MapData & NavTeq" - other areas will have one or more of those and/or others that arent in that list...
As for the innaccuracies, I doubt they are by Google's or NavTeq's
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But the thing is, on my address lookups the data is like on the wrong side of the street. I don't see a p
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Some of the data is missing and gets interpolated from the rest... for instance, my house range isnt in the MAIN data. What I mean by that is, the even house numbers for my road segment arent in the dataset (the odd ones are). Figuring out where my house "is" (as accurately as any of the data will allow) simply requires using the odd numbered data to calculate it - or looking through the secondary data sets (where my house range IS located). Many sites, (and even some of the large companies that use it for
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Yes, this is funny, but in light of the parent post: how much funny and how much true?
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Sounds like marketing nonsense to me. If they direct you to the right neighbourhood, then they might as well be directing you to the right address, as any stalker will just use street signs and house numbers once they're in the vicinity to get a finer grained location. The real reason map data providers insert errors is so they can dete
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The THEORY (ie: not mine, and dont know or care how valid it is) is that if the map data was accurate, bad people could pinpoint an exact location to within 13" +/- a few inches to do bad things, like use their imaginary WMDs to to pinpoint bombing - and (my guess) also to make the average citizen feel slightly more anonymous since the locations on the map dont actually correspond to their real location in the real world (most people wont make the connection you made - that the directions and location info
Fixing wrong business information (Score:2)
Thanks
Not bad! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Not bad! (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
For what it's good (Score:5, Funny)
Following Calvin and Hobbes strategy, one never knows who hits from above.
Can't this be automated? (Score:2)
--
Educational microcontroller kits for the digital generation. [nerdkits.com]
Re:Can't this be automated? (Score:5, Informative)
Hi... it's not quite that simple. Here is how the data works... let's assume you live on a straight street...
The data has StartLong, StartLat -> EndLong, EndLat and corresponding StartHouseLeft, EndHouseLeft, StartHouseRight, EndHouseRight for that segment (which may or may not be your whole street - depends on whether the street curves somewhere, or is intersected by other streets, etc). Google, Tele, Nav, etc take what address you enter, and interpolate it based off that data so...
If the data set says your street starts at #0 and goes to house #40 and yours is house #20, it interpolates your address to be dead center on the segment and calculates that lat/long point based off that... but... what if half the houses on your street have 150' frontages, while the other half have 80'? Well, then the data is innaccurate... or what if (which seems to be the standard) the data starts your street at 1, but your street actually starts at 14? (Mine is exactly like that... so the whole first segment is highly innacurate). And the segment data dont take into account the WIDTH of interesections... so segment one (when it hits an intersection) ends in the middle of it. Segment two starts at that exact point. If the intersecting road is a rural or suburban local road, it may be 30-40' across... if it is a highway, it may be a couple hundred feet across (depending on median size, # of lanes, etc). That also makes all data even more innacurate (because the start address gets located on the highway - as the corner is represented by a point intersection instead of by a 2D road and highway width intersection.
So, no, there is no way way to fix it - because even though the data does say what type of road each segment is, that still wont tell you how wide the road (or any median on it) is. For instance, Interstates in the middle of no-where are often 2 lanes each direction... or in Norther Jersey, hit 6 or 7 lanes each direction... they both show up as the same road type.
Parent
Summary Inaccuracy (Score:4, Informative)
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The claim may not be true, but it is indeed made in the article:
Is there anything these guys do which isn't smart? (Score:2)
I hope they never turn evil, because come 10 years, 95% of internet connected users are going to be using their services.
Add missing data (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
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 [navteq.com] 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 ther
Re: (Score:2)
How about adding locations? (Score:4, Insightful)
Real estate records would have been better (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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meter == yard? (Score:3, Interesting)
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: (Score:3, Funny)
Most companies don't take the building with them...
Re:Crap. (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
- RG>
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For those who can't read past the very first line. (Score:2, Informative)
Google covered their bases. All their bases.
Re: all your bases (Score:2, Funny)
Re:For those who can't read past the very first li (Score:3, Interesting)
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I wonder, does it check to make sure my IP address is near the location I'm moving, or is it just a glitch?
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Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
No, but maybe a bad unscrupulous competitor can have a hog farm built within 200 yards of their location :-)
If it's on the same street, the moderators may have a tough time verifying the placement anyways; short of going there, finding another map, or sending a fax to the business to verify their location on a written map.
It's not like a Google rep can call residences/businesses on the phone and easily ask them to verify that X is their right physical location. (No way to communicate a map in a
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
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