In the USA, it's really easy to find pretty much any address. There are numbers on every building, they follow a sequence, and the road signs are plentiful and very readable.
In Thailand, figuring out the address of a place could take weeks...even if you're physically standing right in front of it and talking to the owner. The address numbers often aren't in sequence. For example, the house numbers on one side of the road in sequence could be 234, 238, 241/1, 1007, 210, 212, 1437/1, 1437/2, 233, and so on. ...where in the US, then road numbers would be something like: 200, 212, 224, 236, 248, (crosses a side street), 300, 312, 324, and so on....very neat, very predictable, and very understandable.
Also, in Thailand, many places have missing street numbers. Many streets aren't marked, or are marked wrong. And, it's just really hard to find an address. I'm sure it's not just Thailand...I think it's probably a lot of places outside of the USA. Also, in the USA, about 99% of everywhere is mapped out to the correct street address, underlying in a layer of Google Maps. In Thailand, it's only about 10-20% correct, and even when it's correct, then the address layer has some problems with Thai and English, so it still has issues.
Right now, Address is a REQUIRED field on Google Maps. There's no way to submit a new business listing, without entering the address field. Google does make a guess about the address based on what it thinks the address of your dropped pin is, but there are problems with that. When moving the map marker, then your only choice is to fill in a new address, or keep using the old one.
There's no way to indicate to Google, "hey, I spent hours researching this address, and I'm super confident that it's the right address," versus, "um, I'm just using the default address that Google filled in for me, and I don't know if it's right or not."
My preference would be to make the address an optional field. However, from what I can tell, the core of Google's place existence algorithms is deeply rooted in addresses, so this probably would be really difficult to develop.
If that can't be done, then there should be a check box that we can check that says something like, "I'm not sure if this is the right address or not."
I'm sure there are lots of international Local Guides that would like to contribute more, but they get to the part where Google asks for the address, and then they stop contributing. Also, Google often makes a guess about the address in a way that doesn't meet current validation requirements for the address, and so often people get stuck trying to edit the default address Google Maps gave them for where they put the place marker.
My philosophy is that if there is something that I can see, or that I know, and if there's a way to make Google Maps better with that knowledge, then I should be able to contribute that. Often I'll know the business exists, have a photo of it, know where it is, know what kind of business it is, know the name in English and Thai, know the phone number, know what the hours are, but I won't know the address. I should be able to contribute this information to Google Maps without being forced to enter a wrong address.
2022
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