Address marker editing woes

[Annika Neudecker]

I'm fervently hoping that one of you might have a speck of good news or advice for me in the face of a growing issue. Over the last few months, our ability to edit address markers on Maps has been fading away. Store markers can be rolled around just fine, but many the markers for our actual addresses can no longer be reported as having data problems. I checked with our rep for the local listings company we use and he told me that Google is phasing out the ability for users to edit addresses. If this is true, it's a disaster.

Misplaced address pins aren't a terribly frequent issues for us, but when they do happen, it's often miles off of the actual store's location or positioned in a way which causes traffic to be routed to a non-entrance, like a residential street behind the property. I've tried adjusting the store pins in hopes that those will stick or the address markers might follow it, but every week they default back to the incorrect location. It's becoming incredibly frustrating to not be able to fix pins.

For example: 45000 Russell Branch Parkway, Ashburn, VA 20147. In this case, traffic is being routed through the neighboring parking lot, where there's no entrance to the property. It's also a competitor, which means some customers wind up just staying there instead of coming to the proper location. What's a frustrated local person to do?

 

[GregM]

Hi Annika,

It doesn't look like the address is misplaced, instead it looks like the directions to the supplied address are incorrect, would this be an accurate summarization?

The address in Google Maps should always be in the middle structure the address represents.

Please don't move the address or store pins in hopes of correcting issues like this it won't work or will be reverted.

There are two way to look at fixing this.

• You can use the report a missing road option, in the report, you can provide the official road name if there is one otherwise just put "Un-named". Once the road has been added you should see directions update. If they do not then please see the next point.
• If you just want to report incorrect directions, you can do so in the turn by turn navigation mode in Google Maps for desktop. Once you input a starting point and destination (make sure the start and end include the incorrect directions you want to have corrected). You then hit show details, then hit send feedback in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen. small flags should then appear next to each step. You can then flag where directions start to go wrong and provide the correct endpoint to the maps team. I like to give them the coordinates of the suggested endpoint as well.

 

[Annika Neudecker]

Hi Greg,

This is just one example of a marker lacking the "Report a data problem" option. I'm less concerned about the specifics of this particular location and more about the general trend of not being able to adjust markers.

 

[GregM]

This problem didn't require the address marker to be adjusted. If you have other examples I'd be happy to look at them.