I doubt that you could conclude one from the other.

Google’s use of TeleAtlas on all of their products is more likely a long term strategic decision in response to Nokia acquiring NavTeq.

It also appears from my research that TomToms purchase of TeleAtlas creates a better long term technical solution to getting more map updates more accurately and more quickly.

That being said I am sure that by consolidating all of their products use to one map data company they are saving considerable money. Hopefully they will be using it on customer service and forward facing staff.

I have seen some new Google Maps Guide names in Groups lately. Does that mean we won’t have Maps Guide Jen to kick around any more? I hope not. Does that mean she has been promoted? She deserves it!

Mike

I am not sure if you saw this post in the Google Groups but it certainly captures the problem with bad map data in the real world:

Hello,

My name is Nathan Nguyen and I’m a Engineer with the City of Santa Cruz, Traffic Engineering Division. We have been receiving complaints of large construction vehicles traveling west on “Grandview St” and making U-turns because they are not able to get on to “Western Dr.”
The east “Grandview St.” approach dead ends and does not connect to
“Western Dr.”.

In “Satellite” view on Google Maps it shows the physical barrier / dead end, but in “Map” view it shows the east Grandview St. approach connecting to Western Dr. Note, the problem only exist with the “east Grandview St. approach”,not the “west Grandview St. approach”, the “west Grandview St approach” does connect to Western Dr. and is correct on Google Maps.

We believe people have been using Google Maps to get onto Western Dr. only to find out Granview St. dead ends. Please update Google Maps to show the correct street layout with no vehicle access from the east Granview St. approach onto Western Dr.

I appreciate your time and hope to have this resolved soon.

Kind regards,
Nathan N. Nguyen
City of Santa Cruz | Public Works Dept.

But it has finally dawned on me how powerful user generated content is in this area. TeleAtlas was bought out by Tom-Tom, the largest GPS vendor in Europe. Their devices feed GPS location & altitude information back to TeleAtlas in huge quantities that is basically Map ready. So things like road elevation gain , traffic flow etc which could never easily be captured before can be assessed and integrated into the Map. TeletAtlas noted that they get 4x the distance of Europe’s roadways each day in data.

When you couple that with direct end user feedback via the GPS or via Google Maps so you can prioritize which data needs correcting first, you have an incredible tool that can easily be checked against sattellite images and then integrated into the Map that much quicker. In the podcast they noted that with this new system (which has only been in place for 4 months since the TeleAtlas aquisition of Tom-Tom) they were able to integrate 50,000 changes into their maps.

So the measure of their success at this will be both accuracy and timeliness. Google and they both have a lot on the line. Can this type of system produce higher quality maps more quickly? Google thinks so.

It will be interesting to watch Miriam’s test because it will basically pit the two systems against each other and provide some insight into how well each of their correction systems work.

Mike

I’m friendly with a long experienced hard mapping person. He has seen his staff shrink away as mapping has moved from hard maps to web versions. Many of his ex-staff now work for the web mapping companies.

They have relayed to him how the web mapping businesses are far less accurate and detail oriented than the hard mapping companies had been. They don’t do the volume of work to get all details.

Community input is nice. I wonder if local governments can get involved and pressure the mapping businesses to get more accurate more quickly. It is in the best interests of the community/government in which Miriam’s client is located to get accurate information about this businesses location on the web. It can only assist his business…thereby creating revenues and taxes.

I know in one instance where one of my businesses was facing a problem that we thought was problematic for our survival we went to our town/county and they were more than willing to step up to the plate on our behalf and help us. After all its to their benefit also. Geez we pay a lot in taxes and fees.

Go get em, Miriam

Not sure exactly how to answer your question.

Have you searched my blog and read the posts on Ranking Factors for Google Maps? Did they provide any insight?

If not, what about the particular listings that you are looking at makes you question their ranking?

Mike

The Tele Atlas map database contains hundreds of millions of features
representing every road, city, park, etc., and hand-editing this data
is still a delicate process. Google gets new data from Tele Atlas once
every 3 months, and it currently takes another couple months to fully
process the error reports for each release. Please look forward to an
acceleration of these updates in the future.

Mike