I’m not sure how a Local Users Bill of Rights would really help endusers/consumers of local search.

It’s my impression that local users are primarily interested in the completeness/correctness of data and maybe not a whole lot else overall. The privacy policy aspect is of lesser interest on average (mainly because most users are pretty ignorant about the implications), but that aspect seems mostly covered by most search engine’s existing stated privacy policies which users could find if they dig down far enough.

It seems to me that it’s the business owners who are the most interested in how the data is presented, and likely the most frustrated with how the data ends up in the condition that it does when presented to users. There should be more disclosure to business owners so that they can understand where the data in their listings originated from and better means of correcting it.

For instance, you mention Navteq in conjunction with mapping errors, and I could mention a few other map providers — it’s not at all straightforward to send them requests for error corrections. I’ve seen some map provider sites in the past that simply don’t provide means for disclosing errors to them at all. Endusers might supply correction reports for map errors, but business owners are often even more motivated and simultaneously in possession of better info for correction than most endusers.

Map and Driving Direction errors are simply the worst aspect of all of local search — there is a very high frequency of errors and it’s been going on for a great many years with seemingly lackadaisical attitude on the part of the providers about correcting them. Companies which display maps are eager to pass the buck back to the map provider and rapidly disavow responsibility for displaying erroneous info. And providers dismissively suggest that the errors will magically disappear in the next update, eight months down the road.

I say “dismissively” because the providers could build up some better sort of methodology for enabling endusers to provide corrections. New streets and new neighborhoods could appear much more rapidly than a year away. There should be more options nowadays than waiting for the mapping provider to process updates from city, state and county government sources on their yearly cycle.

Google Maps has enabled a level of user-provided corrections, to location pinpoint markers. But, there’s not a facility for allowing a business owner whose location is on a street not yet marked on the underlying map image to provide update info.

One question we might ask is: does providing tools for informing Google Maps and other local search sites of data errors sufficiently satisfy responsibility for having correct data? As a user, I think it’s great that we could tell them what to change/fix in listings, but I’m on the run most of the time and don’t have time to pause and correct their stuff — and I often won’t find it’s wrong until I’m in the car trying to find the place.

Should the industry come together to get an independent auditor test each of them for data correctness? As a consumer, maybe the best I could hope for would be to be informed about the percentage of error found in each online local search service. I’d mostly gravitate to the most complete and lowest in error — if I could easily tell which one that is.

Consumers of local search want complete and correct info. Providing a bill of rights telling me I have the right to complete/correct info seems to fall short to me — I would interpret it as a PR play, glossing over or attempting to distract me from what’s going on. I don’t think a bill of rights would really help me get what I need or improve data quality unless the bill of rights provided me with some means of fining the providers each time they send me to an incorrect map location or show me a business that’s closed up.

For it to work, I think a Bill of Rights would have to have some teeth — something which would incent or punish providers to be more aggressive with ongoing quality improvement efforts.

I would simply ask that Google provide a simple and expanded level of customer service to correct errors. Google Maps has appeared with increasing frequency over the last 1.5 years. The information is replete with errors. Google has established “Groups” to air these problems. Too often these issues go unsolved or unsettled.

Google assembled immense amounts of data, loaded it into maps, created great visibility, added features and algo’s to this data, set up methods to edit the data…..and then has left the business owners on a merry romp in trying to correct misinformation.

Its higly irresponsible. I’d like to see the issue raised at ever greater levels of public awareness to have pressure put on Google to correct these problems and institute a form of customer service.

The driving/directions problems have existed long before Google maps started showing within organic searches. They exist in all maps, directions programs.

Some time ago I ran into an experienced provider of maps for a business that has produced old line hard copies for decades before the web. He described how his staff shrunk as the web based mapping companies picked up employees with experience. He described how the accuracy issue is simply shortchanged by establising maps and creating sets of directions with far fewer standards than those that were utilized by the hard mapping companies.

Much of the world has moved to web based mapping solutions and their data and applications simply aren’t that good. It starts at the top with putting more resources into solutions that are not as problematic.

Again I’d like to see a larger arena address this issue so that the search engines and their mapping partners are forced to step to the plate to invest more in the solutions and create better records and technology.

It needs a larger louder arena to push the engines to upgrade their development of local information and maps/directions to a better set of solutions.