Comments on: NYU Medical Center reports Maps problems

By: Mike Blumenthal

Mike Blumenthal — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 22:37:50 +0000

Jane

Right you are on the complexity issue. It is solvable but it is confusing and time consuming.

I am glad that you have found the site useful. I would only ask that if you have experience relating to the conversation that you occasionally share it with everybody.

Thanks again

Mike

By: Jane G.

Jane G. — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 22:15:00 +0000

The company I work for recently hired a marketing firm to see if it was possible to increase our brand awareness by making our centre locations visible through google maps. So far the results are not that satisfactory.

We are doing our research and the potential looks great but the implementation is not so easy.(I guess that’s a good thing, right? otherwise all our competitors would be on top of it.)

BTW, I am finding this blog realy helpful. Already subscribed.

By: earlpearl

earlpearl — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 01:53:38 +0000

Mike:

I took a hard look through Y and MSN local. You are right. There are a similar number of erroneous listings. The data must be accumulated from very similar sources.

If they were all similarly accessed by as many visitors then all of them would be seeing the same volume of comments.

Dave

By: Mike Blumenthal

Mike Blumenthal — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 21:48:57 +0000

Hi Dave-

It is exciting times

Mike

By: Earlpearl

Earlpearl — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 21:37:10 +0000

hmmm. the glass house metaphor may be entirely accurate. We aren’t seeing that volume of comments because no other engine has elevated their local data into organic queries.

I too am eager to see how Google responds.

By: Mike Blumenthal

Mike Blumenthal — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 19:21:25 +0000

Hi Dave-

I am not sure that anyone that lives in glass houses should throw stones. I am sure that if Yahoo and MSN got anywhere near the scrutiny of Google we would see similar (and perhaps more egregious) errors.

Google is going to pick the easy fruits of correction first and if many problems (i.e.map location) can be solved by sending folks to the Local Business Center, they will and I envision the most common problems being solved there.

There are some that will be corrected by improving the data that Google chooses to use, but there are some like business closings that will be harder to fix. I am anxious to see the tactic that Google chooses for that.

Mike

By: Earlpearl

Earlpearl — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 18:48:06 +0000

Mike: I’m migrating from a snide commentator on the size and seriousness of mistakes to one who acknowledges that G is making efforts to resolve problems.

I do believe they need to increase the scope of customer service responses to be able to identify, acknowledge,and correct mistakes more quickly. They have plenty of money and manpower. They could tackle this more aggressively if and when some of the more egregious problems become more public.

In the meantime they are making some changes for the better. They just should do it more quickly. (frankly if I was Y or MSN I’d be highlighting stuff like this like there was no tomorrow. LOL

G made corrections on the Duke U. data the day it appeared in G maps for business owners. I spoke w/ Bart a few days later to find that “most” of the problems were resolved. (I don’t understand that one.)

You’d think that if they are aggregating lots of data from old websites and old directory information they can cleanse data to find the most up to date URL and trash all the old data–the authority site for the business. If not some process like that…then they just need to put more customer service operators available to cleanse the data.

Regardless there is some progress there.

Dave