What’s worse than over-promising and under-delivering? Not delivering at all, and claiming you did.

I forget the exact timeline, but a while back I submitted five error reports to Google. I got responses to them yesterday. Of the five errors I reported, only two had been actually fixed. Google claimed all of them had been fixed. I ended up reopening those error reports.

I have probably reported a dozen errors to Google. In the beginning, they lived up to the 30-day promise. But as time has gone by, their performance has slipped. I can forgive them being tardy with a fix, but it is difficult to forgive them for saying they fixed something when they didn’t. It makes me wonder if a technician was overwhelmed and claimed they addressed the error when they didn’t.

Mike:

The way I learned the adage, and I heard it a lot, was “under promise, over perform”. Whatever. I heard it from a lot of business people, primarily small business operators.

I don’t think it holds true for big businesses though. They promise. They may or may not perform. The weight and momentum of their size often overwhelms instances where customers are unhappy, where they don’t meet expectations.

Sometimes it catches up to them. Sometimes, catching up to them takes years, or even decades (as is probably the case with GM) but pure size and power overwhelms individual….and even a mass of individual dissatisfaction.

Its just a feeling, but you aggregate all the smb’s that complain in Google groups for maps and small businesses; you take all the dissatisfied small businesses that simply don’t complain of errors in Google Maps because it is beyond them….then you aggregate them against all of Google’s new SMB customers. I bet the volume of new customers outweighs the volume of dissatisfied.

That is just a guess…but Google has been generally rolling out regular marketing to the SMB world….and it keeps coming out and is growing/expanding in its efforts. I bet it is working.

Now I wish they would “service customers” better. I’ve tried to be provocative in pushing that. I don’t see it occurring though in the big market place at this time.

I am running into this same problem with my new business. I just recently added it to Google and when I punched in my address Google tried to say I was 3 miles away from my actual location. So I thought I would go ahead and fix the problem for them to give them more accurate information. What I didn’t know was that they would not show my listing until they verify that info. So as of now my business is still pending review and not showing on google. Anyways they still have more time in their 30 day promise but I will let you know if they end up making it in time.

Also had a question for you experts. Do online listing services like Universal Listings work to get your business info out to the different search engines? I submitted my business to their site and paid my $30 but haven’t been able to see any results. Any thoughts or comments on that?

Thanks for all your great articles Mike. I love reading your blog.

Mike,
Thank you for reporting how this went. This is the first mention I’ve seen of whether the new reporting features work or not. Maybe Google ought to set their date at 60 days and then expectations would not be disappointed with a 45 day fix.

You know, someone at Cre8asite was talking about a new major bridge in Canada that’s been up for 6 months and is visible on StreetView but still missing from Maps. Would be a good thing to report to Google

@Earlpearl

You are right that the momentum of large organizations frequently subsumes some of the quality issues. And as you note, they are also masked by growth, as it hides many sins.

My sense is that while Google has some time to fix these issues they will not be able to avail themselves of GM’s 9 lives strategy to a painful death strategy.

A switch to a different Mapping provider does not have a 5-10 year replacement cycle. While there are emotional barriers to switching, they can and do hit the tipping point in technology much sooner than in hard goods. Think Visicalc or even Lotus 123.

Supreme arrogance often accompanies the Greek drama of corporate decline….that, at least to my observation, has not yet occurred in Google’s case.

@Mike

One error was a college with its grounds shown in polygon form that has been closed since the 1970s. They first said I was right, then said they fixed the error. The college is still shown on the map. What is irritating is I gave the name of the business now using the college’s grounds and buildings and there is even a point of interest down the road for this business, yet Google did not make the fix.

The other errors are roads that are actually driveways (one into a gas station, another into a school bus yard).

I reopened these error reports and this morning received another notice from Google that my error report was correct about the bus yard’s driveway not being a street. So their communication is good, it’s just a matter of them actually fixing what they say they fixed.

Correcting points of interest and businesses is fine and dandy, but I think it is more important to be fixing incomplete, incorrect, or extraneous roadway data. Since Google is all about advertising, the POIs are more important to them than the underlying roads and place names.

I looked back at some older submissions regarding incorrect street names and turn restrictions, and they were addressed quickly and correctly the first time. It would be interesting to know how many error reports have been submitted. Reporting the number would be a two-edged sword. If it’s a high number, it will make it look like Google’s data set is junk, but if they say they fixed a lot of errors in a timely manner, it may sound impressive.