Google DO NOT provide :
Advanced Geocoding
Option for Large Static Maps

service Level Agreement
Technical Support
Support portal & usage reporting

Google maps for business is a basic mapping service for API and is not always free. The customisation is poor, and the coverage is not great, seldom recognising small towns and only to postcode accuracy as NO geocoding !

If something is good enough, they would not give it away !

Their API does lack customisation and the maps lack coverage, The directions do not cover toll costs etc and are generally very poor in comparrision charts compared to someone like Viamichelin who usually come out on top.

Google have no SLA and no cannot guarantee the service and any data going thought their server will be stored. (Privacy issues)

The solution is no good for Asset tracking and can include adverts, they announced today they are putting up a wall of 5 views a day for news ads’s, so its coming !

If it was not so convenient it would not be so popular. I want a little better quality, better accuracy and nicer looking maps and directions which work and so i use Viamichelin business as they have various platforms to play with including mobile store finders on the iphone

I was traveling yesterday and missed the API going down. Do you have more details or a link?

So Google map data is not very good and I would not recommend it for big business as privacy is a huge issue ( another hack yesterday) left the mapping api disabled

My father works for a phonebook company and they set up phone tracking for their clients to see how many people the phonebook ads are bringing in. It is this type of data, I think, that will begin to make us be able to understand the true scope of local search, but it’s going to take some time.

At this point, no one I speak to (outside of the industry) has ever heard of local search. That is the funny thing about working in a web-related field. What we know today won’t be in common use until ‘tomorrow’. Your example of your wife is pretty perfect…she is married to a fellow who spends all day thinking about this stuff (you), so you’d think that exposure would make her into an avid user, but it doesn’t. My mother finally knows what SEO is. But, like everything else, it has taken time.

A lot of this depends on Google educating the public about its services.

Thanks, again, Mike. I’ll stay tuned in to keep reading about your findings!
Miriam

Nevertheless your questions are obviously of interest. On the first, as you say the difficulty in communicating with the owner if the e-mail address changes is also present with full websites. If a quarterly e-mail verification goes out and the company doesn’t sink without trace overnight, hopefully the company owner or even the bankruptcy trustee will be aware that this useful geographical locator is about to disappear. If it is important that the world knows where they are, then presumably someone will update the LURI.

On your second question, I see less of a problem. If someone else tries to ‘hijack’ a given company location with a false telephone number, they are likely to be fielding a number of calls from irate callers looking for some other company entirely. In the case where someone else is attempting identity theft, this could be more of a problem. Presumably if it is felt to be a real concern, some security process could be put in place to minimize the problems.

You seem to be moving in the right direction…I would ask two more questions about the idea:

1)What happens with the email follow up when the business owner changes email addresses and forgets to update the LURI (like what happens now with domain names)

2)What is to prevent duplicate and/or hijacked information i.e. a nefarious competitor creating a LURI with his phone number for your business?

Mike

Correct me if I am wrong, it seems that you are describing/asking two things in your response:

1)How do people actually use Google Maps (your example of relocating research)and thus, what do they expect back from it?

and
2)What is the quality of the mapping data and the driving directions and how much can we really rely on it?

Both are interesting points.

Your question of how people actually use Google’s local data is an important one… it was always a question that I had about the Yellow Pages.

Like you, I hardly ever discover new information from local queries. I know where my favorite restaurants are and have the # already in my cell. I only use Google Maps when searching for local stuff, as a phone directory. I live in area where I would need 7 phone books to call my leads etc. and the Google OneBox solves that problem elegantly. I personally use it much more than I ever did the Yellow Pages. I use 877-520-find and Google SMS in a similar way.

However I do, like you, use Google local data for researching local businesses for trips that myself or my wife will be taking…I look for the nearest florist to buy my honey flowers when she is on a business trip, I check out where the nearest Kinko’s is so she can make an emergency copy etc. She, even though reasonably tech savvy, hasn’t really done that herself yet.

Which brings me to my questions (ah..finally you say) that you alluded to:
-How do real people use the information?
-How often do they use it?
-Is that frequency enough to someday generate as many pageviews as Google organic?
-Is knowledge and familiarity the barrier to use? or
-Does data quality discourage users?
-Will the new technology lead to new ways of exploring local information?

I have seen little solid information on these questions. I would love to know the answers but haven’t really figured out a way to gather the data in a meaningfully way.

If $ investment by the big boys is any indicator (I don’t believe that it is), people are going to be using this information from when they wake up in the morning to when they go to sleep at night.

The reality is sure to be different than that. But how deep and wide, broad based usage of Local Search will be, depends on technology (like the iPhone) that is not yet even shipping. When will my brother (who is in his late 50′s) use it? When will my wife (in her late 40′s) use it that way? When will my children in their teens use it? I just don’t know. I also don’t know the many potential future uses, although your idea is one of many.

On the issue of driving directions, the algorithms Google uses, the quality of the underlying Map data, I am less well qualified to answer.

I sense that Google is less than overjoyed about the issues that their map data providers cause, like the difficulty of correction. I also sense the they are working on improving this data and their purchase of Endoxin might get them into the mapping data business directly.

There was a funny story in the WSJ the other day about the widespread adoption of GPS in automobiles in Germany and how it was leading to bonehead moves…like one guy turning right when the GPS said to and driving onto the curb instead of turning right on the next street… At some level human behavior will have to account for the quirks in the new technology.

So while the answers that Google gives may be problematic, I am not sure that they are “bad data”, just not totally useful. End users will have to develop new skills to fully take advantage of the new technology. And Google will continue to to work on the interface and results..I guess that has always been the case.

Thanks for your questions! Sorry for the ramble of opinion…your questions help me clarify, my thinking. Thanks!

Mike

I have read Bill’s work on this as well (location sensitivity), and yes, I can see how this might apply to an area where the user might be willing to drive a bit farther to get to a restaurant out of town. So, my answer is, yes, the data is relevant, when you look at it this way.

And, I see just what you are seeing in the case of the motorcycle dealership. There are not any chiropractors in my town…so Google local is, again, showing me next town over results.

How could this be problematic? Well, perhaps if you were looking to move house, and wanted to find a community that had _____________ in it. ___________ might be a Catholic Church, a physical therapist, a Whole Foods market, a laundromat, a cancer treatment center. Though Google is providing town names in the local search results, the fact that they are bringing up exterior towns in the search could wrongly lead someone to believe those services would be located in the town they are searching for, if they are not looking very carefully at the results set.

Because of something like this, maybe it would be better if you did a search for ‘Chriopractor, My Town’ Google could have a response like “There are no Chiropractors listed at present in this town. Try the nearest city?”

Usually, when you live in an area, you know what is where. But when you are investigating a new place, or on the road, the accuracy of the data you can get from searches is really crucial. Google maps has sent us on wild goose chases in the past because of inaccurate driving directions. Not fun.

Thanks for your great response, Mike!
Miriam

If the company doesn’t have a website but uses this LURI-hosting service we are imagining, then it would be easy to build in a quarterly verification service. Each quarter an e-mail message is sent to the owner requiring a reply for continuing hosting. If there were no reply within 15 days, then a reminder would be sent. If there were no reply within a further 15 days, then the LURI would be removed from the hosting service. Sounds like a feasible way to do this.