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