I would like to share another new way to find duplicates and places with incorrect categories. One that can be very helpful for tourists visiting your area.
When you open Google Maps you will often see the heading Explore nearby followed by some square cards named Amusement parks, Museums etc. When you select one of these you will get an auto-generated list of such places.
If you study the list carefully you might see duplicates and a few wrongly categorized places that certainly should not be on the list.
Go fix those problems by Suggesting edits to the places and be a great supporter of the Local Guides Clean The Map-project.
Cheers.
PS These are not lists compiled by other local guides.
Hi @MortenCopenhagen thank you for sharing the tip, I never thought that there might be incorrectly categorized businesses on the flash cards, I am glad you shared this post ,I will take some time to look at it to see if there is something to correct next time. Cheers!
I have found an organization for museums listed as a museum hence showing up on the list. I changed it to an āAssociation or Organizationā. That solved the problem. Same thing for amusement parks. It would not be fun for a family to show up at a boring office when they expected to ride a rollercoaster! Also, some private homes by mistake were categorized as museums. Private homes should not be on the map, as you know.
This is a tricky one @MortenCopenhagen . Some items in those lists indeed have a sub-optimal category when shown in that list (to match the list subject, it seems), but upon opening the POI details, they do have the right category (e.g. Tourist attraction vs. Museum).
What do you mean, @JanVanHaver ? Could you exemplify?
I noticed that terms in a name can qualify places to go on a list in spite of the category being off from the title on the card but being a correct category for the place. Is that your point? The correct way to fix this would be changing the algorithm used to generate the lists.
Maybe we need to collect a bunch of examples of this to get the point across to the responsible developers.
Yes, thatās what I mean @MortenCopenhagen : POIs seem to show up in various lists with different (though related) categories, seemingly to more or less force them to fit the list topic. I have not seen real āerrorsā, rather generalizations.
Just wanted to add one more argument for Cleaning Cards:
It is a very nice way to contribute to the cleaning project because it can be done rather quickly. It takes a limited effort to clean a list and there are only a limited number of lists.
Another great post, @MortenCopenhagen . Definitely worth checking for our own areas.
Similar to these Suggestions Cards are Googleās āCity Guidesā. They appear as Lists but I am not sure if they are curated by a human or an algorithm. Either way, the quality in my area for these Lists by Google is very poor.
The bad thing is, we cannot report/ flag anything related to them.
Thanks for your comment. Your included pic foes not show on my end.
I also noticed that under city guides the different areas in the city are described on some cards but we canāt suggest edits. There is room for some improvements.
The Parks/Parker example you mentioned is indeed quite a striking one @MortenCopenhagen . That list was obviously machine-built and most likely based on an incorrect localization assumption. So far I have not found any errors of this level in the ciyy cards I have explored (in Belgium) - just the incorrect category here & there.
What this technique is also good for, however, is finding places where incorrect pics have been uploaded. A lot of the POIs on the lists are places that typically attract a lot of people, and therefore typically have restaurants and bars in the immediate vicinity. Those restaurants and bars very often also have pics of the crowd-attracting monument/museum/statue/etc uploaded to them.
The aspect you have shared that may help towards the initiative Local Guides Clean The Map (#LGCTM), is indeed very interesting direction to be explored! : ]
Regarding the example you have shared, it would be directly from the Explore nearby tab > For You section, then the category Parks was chosen,correct?
Iām sorry to nag you with this. But the Parks list in Copenhagen is still full of irrelevant entries. Nothing has improved.
Would you be able to share some Info on how best to provide feedback on these auto-generated lists so the feed back will be heard? What are these lists called in Google speak?