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konspence | 2 years ago

I would add to this article that a major issue with Google Maps has been businesses trying to SEO-pad their business names on Google Maps, to the detriment of readability.

This is also against their TOS – the "business name" form is supposed to be their legally registered business name, the one that they probably have signage for. Moderators simply don't enforce this, and with Map Maker basically gone, the community of moderators is somewhat of a cloak and dagger group now.

I have tried to clean some of these up via submissions, because in spite of agreeing with the points of the article and using mostly Apple Maps for navigation, Google Maps still is better in terms of having a lot of community sourced data and overall place discoverability (along with Yelp, which Apple Maps seems to no longer source data from).

Examples of these business names:

- {name} - {city name} Axe Throwing

- {name} License Agency - (Vehicle/Vessel not drivers license)

- {name} - Lunch Buffet (Friday-Sunday) - {cuisine} Restaurant - {city name}

And many now have:

- {name of a local chain} - {neighborhood or city name}

Some of this is a UX problem or perhaps data architecture problem – in the case of local chains, I imagine many are dealing with people calling in orders and showing up at the wrong place to pick up their order. Google Maps could do a better job showing the neighborhood/locality/"local name" of the area in the search results.

Others are just a lack of consistent moderation.

discuss

order

CydeWeys|2 years ago

> {name of a local chain} - {neighborhood or city name}

Wait, what's wrong with this? This is just good practice. It's helpful to be able to, when communicating with someone, unambiguously refer to the exact location, e.g. Westville Chelsea v Westville East v Westville Hudson v Westville Wall Street.

muricula|2 years ago

Because on a map it's already implicit in where the pin actually is. You're staring at a pin in Westville Chelsea.

konspence|2 years ago

I already know where I’m looking.

And the map TOS state it should be the business name.

I pointed this out as a UX problem, which it is.

graftak|2 years ago

This would be solved by dividing it up on 2 distinct fields, a business name field and a title field. Then a business can put their SEO crap in the title field and google maps can decide how much of the info to display when.

Of course moderation would still be a thing, perhaps a character limit of 25 for the name should be enforced unless they can demonstrate why that is too little.

Coincidently the separate fields is how Apple Maps does it, although their title field appears made up of a category list item, presumably to keep it consistent and free of spam.

technothrasher|2 years ago

> {name of a local chain} - {neighborhood or city name}

What I'm starting to see a lot which is frustrating is:

{name of completely not local chain} - {neighborhood or city name}

Such as "Local Town Plumbing" with a national telephone number to some plumber referral service and will be located where there is an empty field or other non-business.

THENATHE|2 years ago

All of those suck except the last example, which is actually extremely useful and helpful to users

oidar|2 years ago

I was disappointed that apple took yelp stuff away from apple maps as well. For restaurants though, clicking on the "menu" link for restaurants takes me to the yelp page for that restaurant.