Google Maps

[Mojo]

Has anyone else been having trouble with Google Maps recently?

I often type a local point of interest in, only for it to suggest a huge number of locations and often the one which I'm looking for is quite a way down.

An example this evening I search for ''Effingham Junction station'' and the first result is Horsley rail station. I then get a number of local businesses including petrol stations and a Sainsbugs supermarket. It then shows Cobham & Stoke D'Abernon station and it's not until marker ''I'' which it shows the actual place I searched for.

Even once I've searched through the list there is no easy way to zoom in on the location aside from several clicks and selecting ''Zoom here'' from the dropdown. Even then it selects a load of other place markers such as bus stops.

Is there a setting somewhere which is causing this? As it's getting quite annoying. It seems everywhere I search the first placemarker is somewhere I'm NOT searching for.

 

[MidnightFlyer]

Has anyone else been having trouble with Google Maps recently?

I often type a local point of interest in, only for it to suggest a huge number of locations and often the one which I'm looking for is quite a way down.

An example this evening I search for ''Effingham Junction station'' and the first result is Horsley rail station.

Try '<station name> Rail Station' and wait for it to appear in the drop down list. I sometimes have trouble with places I type in if I don't select them off the list.

 

[Class172]

I do know what you are referring to but it doesn't usually occur all the time for me. It works best (gives me decent results) when im using it on my iPod. I have seen an option somewhere that allows you to turn off the business search but unfortunately I cannot remember where it was now. I'll try and look tomorrow.

 

[Mojo]

This doesn't always work. Avonmouth Rail Station shows Temple Meads as the first station and a load of dots as far away as Cardiff and Burnham. Effingham Junction Rail Station also still gives Horsley as the first result.

 

[Peter Mugridge]

I just put the town name in and zoom in manually whenever I use GM.

 

[Old Timer]

To be honest I find it is better to omit the word "station" because it depends on how the station is actually logged on the system. For example if you input "xxx station" you might get a nil return becuase it could be logged as "XXX Rail station" or "XXX railway station".

Quickest is to type in the name of the town or area and then either input the station as shown or recentre the map to the station and pin it.

 

[jon0844]

I've had problems for months and think they must have changed their search algorithms. Even looking for obvious things like 'Tesco' seems to come back with hits for hotels or restaurants that have no link to Tesco at all.

Since they added extra things like ratings and reviews, some searches seem to pick up keywords in reviews - so, again, you get a totally random set of results.

I am sure Google MUST be aware of a lot of these issues. Another big problem is a lot of the points of interest on their maps are sometimes offset by quite a distance.

Perhaps they've changed the data source for their maps (there's Navteq, TeleAtlas and probably Google has made many of its own now, for Streetview etc) and had a problem when porting data?

Such a shame as Google Maps is still one of the best mapping services. Switch to Bing if you want to see how NOT to do things!