At the beginning of last week, I started to notice posts in the Google Help forum and I received emails from a number of correspondents that their records had merged with nearby competitors. At first blush they appeared to have all of the symptoms of hijacked records however after lengthy, ongoing communication with Google it appears that these merged records are being conflated by Google.
Despite having the Local business Center to provide authoritative information to a business listing, Google for a number of reasons and in a number of situations has always merged some business records inappropriately. The merged records will take on parts of one record and parts of the other in a somewhat willy nilly fashion, the url of one business and the telephone number of the other for example.
Typically these are two businesses at the same address or sharing a phone line. Sometimes the data mixup is from an upstream provider and Google will take the upstream provider’s information as more accurate or important than that in the Local Business Center. In the past Google has advised to slightly modify the two addresses so that Google could do better at distinguishing the merged records. In the case of the bad data coming from upstream data providers, it was necessary to track down the bad data and have it changed or face remergers on a regular basis.
Google Guide Joel described the issue before the recent rollout and snafu: “This is how our system works by design. Businesses that are the same address / location are merged. In general, it’s the right thing to do. However, we’ll take your concern as feedback. We want to improve these systems and are actively looking at doing this in the right way. In the meantime, there’s no way to force an immediate fix to the issue.”
For some, Google Maps has become the ultimate Kafka like nightmare of late, as Google is now merging records between nearby competitors just because they are in close proximity to each other. Apparently the merging algorithm has changed and Google is now merging records that have nothing in common other than being in the same map sector and a similar business profile.
One of the owners of a recently merged records was from a Doctor’s office and noted the following: “Google merged the records for Dr John G Moe and Dr Kenneth Landis and this almost led to a tragic patient outcome this weekend. An emergency room doctor from Kansas tried to contact Dr. Moe to see if a certain drug could be given to our patient. Since the patient was unable to give the ER our phone number, the googled Dr John G Moe. Since Google linked our record, the saw the phone number for Dr Landis and left a message on his answering machine and since he wasn’t on call that weekend, we didn’t learn of the problem until much later”.
Here are some graphic examples of this behavior:
| Correct Location Information Site 1 | Correct Location Information Site 2 |
| The Inn on Lake Superior 350 Canal Park Drive Duluth, MN 55802 (218) 726-1111 (888) 668-4352 (218) 727-3976 - Fax innonlakesuperior.com |
South Pier Inn-On the Canal 701 S Lake Ave Duluth, MN 55802 (218) 786-9007 |
Google results after suffering a merger:
———————
Another example:
| Correct Location Information Site 1 | Correct Location Information Site 2 |
| Holiday Inn Express 909 N Spence Ave Goldsboro, NC 27534 |
Hampton Inn 905 N. Spence Avenue, Goldsboro, North Carolina 27534 |
Google results after suffering a merger:
As of late Tuesday afternoon, Google started addressing the issue publicly in the forums as Google Employee Nina noted: “The fix needs to be automatic - not manual. These things usually take several weeks to test and bring live. We know it’s causing user pain and I know they are working really hard on it right now as we speak.”
My interpretation: It appears that this new, more malicious merging problem has yet to be fully assessed or defined and that repair could be a lengthy process.
Ugh….more dire health problems. In this case…an utterly dire health emergency. This isn’t a first in the health world. Meanwhile Google insists that the problem is systemic….and is specifically not worthy of actual customer service response.
Hey guys…can’t you do two things at once? You know, like chewing gum and breathing.
Meanwhile, Google provides Customer service when its adwords accounts are involved. It responds to particular needs for its income stream. Yet it doesn’t respond to others when google’s flaws or weaknesses that accomodate theft result in income losses to others, doesn’t engage in customer service when consumer fraud is being accomodated.
Meanwhile…isn’t Yahoo providing levels of customer service?
Comment by Earlpearl (232 comments) — April 29, 2009 @ 8:40 am
While Google is working out these issues, maybe Google should consider placing a prominent disclaimer on the maps page rather than in the forum warning people of potential incorrect listings. ( I highly doubt they would ever do it)
It would certainly be the right and moral thing to do especially if there is clear cut evidence that people utilize Google Maps during health emergencies etc.
Comment by Art (9 comments) — April 29, 2009 @ 9:03 am
@Earl
There seems to be some concern that changing the records manually will screw things up worse.
It is and has always been unclear to me what the purpose of the LBC record is, if they don’t trust as the final word.
@Art
Yes of all the products that Google has left in beta for so many years, one wonders why Maps actually graduated.
Comment by Mike (411 comments) — April 29, 2009 @ 11:24 am
Regarding changing things manually, I agree it has potential to screw things up even more. There are likely many thousands of cases of these kinds of erroneous mergings (many go unreported, yet to be discovered) and developing an automated method is certainly the way to go. If you manually fix a few here and there the automated method, once correctly developed, may pass over the manual fixes as they no longer fit into the whole database structure the same way as they once did. Or might hinder other database wide changes in the future.
I think it’s obvious why Google let Maps out into the wild before it was quite ready. The web is going local in a big big way and to gain a market dominance position Maps had to be out now, regardless of it being still connected to the incubator. Classic case of the Ready, Fire, Aim approach.
Comment by Stever (64 comments) — April 29, 2009 @ 12:16 pm
It seems terribly screwy to me. It also seems deeply irresponsable.
If the system is unable to account for changing records manually, while its existance both creates faulty records and encourages mapspam….then its usage is premature.
The premature nature is a function of the negative impact on the following:
1. Potential health problems. cripes that’s big. The Duke medical center problem, this latest problem, etc. all point to the potentially dire consequences of faulty information.
2. Consumer fraud. The Missouri Attorney General’s investigation found that its one consumer was charged double that of what he/she was quoted on the phone by an emergency locksmith. That is theft.
3. The incredible impact on the visibility of businesses….and the dire impact on these businesses when erroneous or hijacked information diverts traffic from the intended sources.
Geez….the economy is bad enough. Does Google want to contribute to the problem.
The situation wouldn’t be so severe if organic Google with Maps inserts wasn’t the dominant form of search for products and services.
Google’s internal problems in fixing the workings of Google Maps are fostering all sorts of problems on an unaware public. If it can’t fix things both systemically and manually at the same time…..its got a huge problem….and its simply laying it on an unsuspecting public.
AND THEN THE PROBLEMS simply stay there.
IMHO its very ugly. I wonder when a high profile industry catches wind of problems wherein business revenues are being misdirected or stolen. It will not only be ugly…it will be costly and extremely well publicised.
Comment by Earlpearl (232 comments) — April 29, 2009 @ 12:44 pm
It is always difficult for me, even as much as I have studied maps to fully understand that a business record isn’t a finite editable entity.
Given that they are not though, the other difficult thing to understand is why the LBC record is not given the highest precedence when there is a discrepancy in the “cluster”.
The third thing that is difficult for me to understand is why they don’t communicate out about problems and difficulties and wait for me to harrass them to death and get totally annoyed that they are not responding. Wouldn’t it be easier to be out in front of the complaints and say: “We know we have a problem, here is is and here is when we hope to have it fixed”…nobody expect this stuff to be perfect but it just should not be so hard to communicate clearly. In the end it is the least expensive of the options.
@Stever
OK it was released early for competitive reasons. So when is it reasonable to expect it to function properly? 2, 4 years? 8 Years? We are going on 5 now.
Google apparently perceives their interests as running Maps as inexpensively as possible and making as much from it via adwords as possible. They do not apparently perceive customer service or PR as a necessary part of that mix.
Mike
Comment by Mike (411 comments) — April 29, 2009 @ 2:00 pm
Most of the time I try and post a link here it doesn’t take. I’ll simply post this article from SearchEngineland today by Matt McGee citing this article and referencing issues facing Google Maps…
http://searchengineland.com/time-to-send-google-maps-to-drawing-board-18295
Funny thing, about 1 week ago Bill Slawski, at SEOBytheSea published about patents impacting local search both in Maps and organic google. The patents are recently released though the publications trail implementation (of some level that we’ll never know) by several years. One of the topics he referenced was “categories”. It seems IMHO that organic does a better job with categories than Google Maps.
It seems there are many bugs in Google Maps. In its own right….that is okay….all the engines and all parts of them are constantly evolving. The more serious issue is that Google Maps has an incredible impact on local businesses, local consumers, and more dramatically local health issues. It needs to address the negative impact it is having on these parties.
Comment by Earlpearl (232 comments) — April 29, 2009 @ 3:38 pm
*Cues: “Another one bites the dust”…
Comment by Gab Goldenberg (6 comments) — April 29, 2009 @ 4:14 pm
Oh, grand, more health emergencies.
This is a good time to trot out the link Jen Chin gave me to the page which has the option to report incorrect emergency data:
http://maps.google.com/support/bin/request.py?contact_type=contact_policy
I still remember my own health emergency and my experience using Maps during that, and frankly, thinking that someone might have been given contraindicated medication as a result of conflated Google records really makes me mad. That could have cost someone their life.
The lesson for emergency medical providers here is an obvious one: do NOT use Google to try to find professionals in the middle of a health emergency. At least on a local level, medical providers ought to have a working internal database of all other medical providers in their county or state. But, considering how the insurance companies have bankrupted the country’s medical system, it’s of little surprise that they would be having to turn to free services like Google local to try to find colleagues. Where I live, the shortage of medical care is truly scary, so I think your article actually highlights 2 emergencies, Mike:
1) A broken medical system
2) A company (Google) willing to play with people’s health and lives by publishing totally incorrect contact information for emergency services
I see major alarms, sirens and flashing red lights in both of those scenarios and we are the losers in both.
Important stuff, Mike. Keep it coming!
Miriam
Comment by MiriamEllis (244 comments) — April 29, 2009 @ 5:11 pm
I don’t know. There is something incredibly robotic about Google’s actions. How can they create an emergency notice, specifically for health issues and then bury it so virtually nobody can find it?
Where is the common sense? Oh yeah. Yahoo has it. They have customer service.
Comment by Earlpearl (232 comments) — April 29, 2009 @ 6:48 pm
[...] Blumenthal has posted more information on this topic at his [...]
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This is not just impacting small businesses. I manage this area for a company with 7000+ locations, and I’ve seen this issue of clustering records increase over the past couple weeks. We have a lot of listings with mixed information from our competitors. Definitely not good. I think Google needs to reduce the number of data sources they use, or do a better job of prioritizing the data sources i.e. the Local Business Center.
Comment by JWilly (1 comments) — April 30, 2009 @ 10:05 am
I would love to see some of your examples if you would like me to look at them. If you haven’t already done so I would encourage you to post at the forums on the Google is Merging Map Records Thread so that Google is aware of your problem.
Comment by Mike (411 comments) — April 30, 2009 @ 10:18 am
[...] loud voice for some serious quality control in Google Maps. Those posts, as well as others about merged listings, have been getting lots of comments and is spawning others in the search industry to demand that [...]
Pingback by Google Maps Locksmith Spam Creeping into Canada (Toronto) | Stever.ca — April 30, 2009 @ 2:18 pm
This isn’t the first time, nor the last time that a mistake in the updating of the alg will cause a “glitch in the matrix” of sorts.
As far as google’s customer service goes……………… good luck?
Comment by Dustin Pitcher (2 comments) — May 1, 2009 @ 1:27 am
One other thing came to mind. If a business is experiencing a substantial decrease in revenue, a targeted ad on maps would provide a temporary bandage for the situation.
I seem to remember a quote “It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters” - Epictetus
Comment by Dustin Pitcher (2 comments) — May 1, 2009 @ 1:47 am
@Dustin
No it won’t be the last time, however Google should be more forthcoming and forthright to the businesses involved. Google should provide a better avenue for reporting this type of problem and timely feedback when its fixed. As they have moved so aggressively into our lives as the provider of local information, they should assume the responsibility of membership in the community. That doesn’t mean that they won’t screw up, just that they accept responsibility if they do.
The loss of revenue comes from two things that a targeted ad in Maps is unlikely to help
1)The loss of 10 Pac exposure. This is national in nature and on a phrase like Hotel would be very difficult compete on.
2)Since the website and phone number is going to a competitor, it is likely that the opportunity will move to them.
I would suggest that your quote: “It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters” - Epictetus would apply equally well to Google in this situation.
Comment by Mike (411 comments) — May 1, 2009 @ 6:12 am
@Gab
Being a tad culturally tone deaf I had to look up your reference to “another one bites the dust”. That search took me to the Wikipedia article on the Queen song. In the article I thought it interesting that they noted:
During the administration of chest compressions during CPR, it can be difficult to achieve and maintain the recommended rate of 100 compressions per minute[6]. The bass line of this song is at such a rate; thus it is frequently recommended to think or hum this song during CPR, to maintain the correct rate[7].
Comment by Mike (411 comments) — May 1, 2009 @ 6:33 am
And Google is supposed to manage our Medical Records..?
Comment by Anna (1 comments) — May 1, 2009 @ 4:01 pm
Anna
That won’t be too painful until they merge your record with the fellow that is having is left leg amputated.
Mike
Comment by Mike (411 comments) — May 1, 2009 @ 5:43 pm
It does bother me that Google Maps is seemingly running on a completely different tune than organic. I can understand the whole “increase your overall citations in local sites/directories” thing works to a certain degree, but it still messes with me.
I’m studying the algorithm of local search and hope to find some decent conclusions over time.
Great article!
Comment by Jim (6 comments) — May 1, 2009 @ 9:23 pm