(New) Port Richey city name confusion

In one of the #LGCTM posts, local guide @Jeanne53 reported an issue of a kind that I have not seen before: loads of businesses in a single town have their address marked with an incorrect city name, although the map markers are correctly placed. As she reports that attempts by local businesses and local guides to get this fixed have failed, I presume there is a bigger problem at map/database level.

No doubt the confusion is related to the fact that the 2 city names are very similar: ‘Port Richey’ and ‘New Port Richey’. The problem is situated in the latter, New Port Richey, where a lot of POIs have the correct road name and house number, but ‘Port Richey’ as city. This seems to have already lead to name changes for a number of businesses and POIs, with the correct city name as part of the POI name. The screen capture below shows a few randomly chosen, but if you explore the map in that area, there are more examples to be found.

As you can see in the next screen capture (of the business @Jeanne53 was talking about) the city name listed for the POIs mentions Port Richey, but should be New Port Richey.

Weirdly enough, other POIs in the area do have New Port Richey, either in the Pluscode field and/or in the address field

@sonnyNg could you please have a closer look at this and/or escalate it to the Maps team?

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@JanVanHaver Thank you for the follow-up. Originally I thought the PlusCode was the issue, but even if I try to change the address by adding the word “New” or by deleting and reentering, I receive a “thank you, edit made” from Google and it is exactly the same as before. I know of no way to change the PlusCode for each address. It is definitely an issue and wonder if it is just happening in my ‘neck of the woods’.

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This is quite intriguing @JanVanHaver , and my first feeling was a recent administrative change, like in this post. In there, for a lot of time the places had a partly wrong indication of the province.

But in your example, the administrative change is quite hold, and the two cities were incorporated on the Tampa county on 1924 (New Port Richey) and 1925 (Port Richey). Time enough to fix the border :slightly_smiling_face:

I agree with you, and most of the places in New Port Richey along the 19 have the double indication.

A lot of work for Google

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@JanVanHaver rather than editing each individual POI, this seems like a job that needs to be escalated to the appropriate GEO Google team.

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Wasn’t something like this (city’s name) is not something that Local Guides can edit, @JanVanHaver ?

So we cannot “clean” it up from Google Maps?

Some typos about a district, for example, sometimes happened and we cannot edit it

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Indeed @iorikun301 things like these we can only report - no chance to fix that ourselves. That’s why I tagged a Google moderator with the question to escalate this.

Another motivation for writing this post was to show the community that from time to time we come across really strange things. What is the strangest thing you ever came across?

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@JanVanHaver I’d appreciate suggestions on what to tell these business owners. I continue to discover more and more issues, Main Street businesses in New Port Richey for example. As a retired teacher and Level 8 LGG, it isn’t easy to let this go. Correcting things wrong and editing is something I enjoy. Can’t imagine I am the only one who noticed this issue

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@Jeanne53 I presume that most of those businesses will be claimed (and those who are not, definitely should - at least to get better control of their data on Maps; I have a podcast episode on that topic, which they can of course listen to), so they should also report this using their Google My Business account.

If you can find out if any of them are using (or considering to use) Google Ads, those businesses might even have more leverage to reach out to Google directly and could possibly get the attention of a more influential team. No guarantee that this will bring any result (it’s speculation on my end), but it probably won’t hurt if loads of people are reporting this issue.

Hi @JanVanHaver , @Jeanne53 ,

Thank you kindly reaching out!

I will make sure to initiate the checking process on the matter! (as in case of any further inquiry, they will be shared in the current post)

Just to be sure, (for reference on the matter), would you mind checking the link in the reply leading to the supposed post, @ErmesT ?

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Oops @sonnyNg

Thanks for letting me know. I wanted to link to this post: How to report an administrative Geographical change?

Fixed also in the previous reply. :worried:

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Hi @ErmesT ,

Thank you for making sure to check! : ]

Much appreciated for your previous research, as I will make sure to study them closely!

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You are welcome @sonnyNg

More than one year later, 99 % of the POIs are fixed, but some of them still have the wrong indication, that’s why I didn’t flagged the post as “solved”

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You are at a higher level and I have no access to check the “link” referred to. Thank you for looking into this matter @sonnyNg and @JanVanHaver . Hoping to hear good things as time goes by.

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Hi @Jeanne53 ,

Thanks for letting us know! : ]

Just to be sure, would you mind checking once again the link leading to @ErmesT 's post How to report an administrative Geographical change?

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@sonnyNg @JanVanHaver I was able to access the link you shared @ErmesT . Thank you.

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Thank you @Jeanne53

As you can see, not all the addresses in the area has been corrected, even if the border issue was fixed long time ago.

My feeling is that you and @JanVanHaver did the best thing by reporting in here, for @sonnyNg to escalate the issue to the team.

You may probably fix the addresses one by one editing them, it will cost a lot of time but maybe will give you a lot of points :slightly_smiling_face:

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@ErmesT @sonnyNg @JanVanHaver

The points are appealing for these edits. (Still hoping for a pair of sock

Google says my edit is accepted, but it is identical, no change takes place. I find it interesting that other online maps have the correct information. So even if I set this as a goal to edit each individually, alas it is a futile effort.

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@ErmesT @ErmesT @sonnyNg

Am happy to report the ability to change addresses to New Port Richey businesses. Found a couple of situations where there is a need to claim the business first. I do notice that the plus code in some situations remains Port Richey. Am happy to see this being resolved. My thanks!

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Hi @Jeanne53 ,

Thanks for sharing the update! : ]

Do feel free to let us know if there would be any further changes on the matter.

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Hi @sonnyNg , circling back on this issue:

I am the marketing coordinator for the City of New Port Richey. Obviously it’s an issue world-wide, but with quarantine in effect, we feel it’s imperative that the locations in geographical New Port Richey are reflected as such in their address.

It looks as though this is still not the case for main Main Street businesses in the heart of the city. Is this something we can take care of as a city government, or is the onus on the business owners themselves?

Thank you,

Jacob Freid

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