{"id":3925,"date":"2009-06-22T10:53:50","date_gmt":"2009-06-22T14:53:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/?p=3925"},"modified":"2009-06-22T10:53:50","modified_gmt":"2009-06-22T14:53:50","slug":"is-google-maps-reducing-customer-support","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/2009\/06\/22\/is-google-maps-reducing-customer-support\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Google Maps Reducing Customer Support?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recently there was a posting in Google’s forum<\/a> where a large hospital facility was asking for help with claiming and verifying their records in Google Maps. They had a phone system that wouldn’t allow phone verification and the post cards either didn’t arrive or were lost in their internal mail system. Google’s Employee Joel responded with this unsatisfying answer:<\/p>\n

I understand this is difficult. Here’s my advice –\u00a0 If you want to individually verify, the best course of action is to check your mail system and make sure the mail doesn’t get lost (not a very satisfying answer, I know, but it’s the best solution with mail problems). Alternatively, you may want to try submitting a bulk feed with the corrected information.<\/p>\n

Late last year when Miriam Ellis<\/a> of the Solas Web Design noted the great difficulty<\/a> she had with emergency health numbers in Google Maps, Google’s Maps Guide Jen responded<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I understand that the main concern expressed is that the repercussions for incorrect information on hospital listings is much greater than that of non-emergency service businesses. We completely agree with this. In fact, we allow hospital and medical service listings to be edited partly for the reasons that you\u2019ve expressed (outdated or misdirected information). Community edits for these listings come under great scrutiny. Our contact options in the help center\u00a0http:\/\/maps.google.com\/support\/bin\/request.py?contact_type=contact_policy<\/a> allows users to tell us specifically when emergency service, shelter, and other hospital data is incorrect, and we aim to resolve these within 48 hours. While it\u2019s not possible for us to go through every single hospital listing in our index, we do our best to ensure the accuracy of major listings.<\/p>\n

The form that Maps Guide Jen mentions has now been removed. A customer service that Google once provided to attempt to reconcile the phone numbers of emergency care and health services has been removed. The question one has to ask is why? One can postulate all sorts of intentions about Google’s behaviors but at the core, one has to assume that they are rational and not crazy.<\/p>\n

Why would they actually reduce their commitment to getting at least emergency numbers as accurate as possible?
\n-Is the task impossible?
\n-Is it too expensive?
\n-Does it open Google up to liability?
\n-Does it set a standard that they have no desire to generally apply?<\/p>\n

Regardless, it does communicate to the world that pin point accuracy is not Google’s goal with Maps. It seems that “good enough” is their objective. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recently there was a posting in Google’s forum where a large hospital facility was asking for help with claiming and verifying their records in Google Maps. They had a phone system that wouldn’t allow phone verification and the post cards either didn’t arrive or were lost in their internal mail system. Google’s Employee Joel responded …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3925","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-google-maps-google-local"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t