2022
What did I find on the map?
Roundabouts are points on the map where several streets come together, but they sometimes also seem to exert magnetic attraction on several points of interest (POI) on Google Maps – as you can see in the screenshot below: a roundabout with 5 POIs on it, all of them in the middle of the road. It is quite obvious that those businesses would actually not be situated in the middle of the road, so this roundabout definitely deserved a closer look.
What did I do?
The best possible source of information would be to go there and observe the situation in person, but as the roundabout was approximately 150 km away from I was sitting at the time, I decided to go for the next best thing: the Street View images of the area. Combined with the information that I found on the websites of the POIs incorrectly positioned on the roundabout, those images helped me find the correct location for all 5 places.
Not all of them were equally easy to find, though. The POIs named “Euro-Finances-Namur” and “Partners Assurances” were quickly found because they were both in the same corner and have relatively big stickers mentioning the business name on the windows – as you can see in the first screenshot. The POI named “Immo Tara” took some more effort, as it turned out to be a bit further down one of the roads, and has the company name on display in a less conspicuous way (screenshot 2).
The one that took most time by far, was the POI named “SPW”. It was only after some Googling that I figured out that SPW is short for “Service Public de Wallonie” (Public Service of Wallonia). This made me suspect it could be quite a big building that would probably not look like a residential housing block. A tall building with a lot of glass in a semi-circle located in one of the corners (screenshot 3) looked like the perfect candidate – and actually was the one I was hunting for: when zooming in at the highest level on the Street View image I discovered the name written on the glass surface, as shown in screenshot 4 (it was actually the image of the red rooster that drew my attention, as that is the symbol used in the Walloon flag).
So, in the end all map marker edits were submitted… and all of them got approved quite quickly.
What was the result?
As it takes a while for map marker edits to actually show at the new location on Maps, I then had to wait a day to check if everything was processed correctly, allowing me to make a screenshot of the cleaned up roundabout, as you can see below.
But hang on, what had happened there? Another POI, one that was not shown when I first came across the roundabout, had now popped up! If you compare this screenshot with the original situation, though, you will notice that this ‘new’ POI is located at the exact same spot where the POI named “Centre Auditif Audika Jambes” was located. This is actually something I have seen also in other places (usually squares or intersections): multiple POIs literally stacked one on top of the other. The new POI turned out to be a duplicate of the “SPW” one, so I already moved it to the correct location to prepare for a suggested merger of the two (more on that process in the #LGCTM case study Tricky Duplicates).
As you can see in the notifications screenshot, also this edit (dated 1 day after the other 5) was also approved. So, finally… the roundabout was POI-free.
This post is part of the Local Guides Clean The Map project (#LGCTM). All details and links to loads of other posts can be found here.
And here's an overview of the case studies published so far:
Hi @JanVanHaver,
very interesting case study indeed, somehow POI's in the middle of the roundabout seems to be popular 😆. Thank you.
