Which Address to Use?

[JoshuaMackens]

I have a client who gave us his address at "535 S 500 E Bountiful Utah".

However, when you look at Google+ and Google Maps they format the address as "535 500 E" completely skipping the "S".

If you check out Mapmaker, they have it formatted correctly as "535 S 500 E" when you look at his listing. But if you look at a few other listings around the area on Mapmaker, they're all different. Some are "535 S 500 E". Others are "535 South 500 E". Still others are "535 South 500 East".

So, here was my initial hypothesis:

Google Maps and Google+ have the address formatted the way Google wants it. Mapmaker has it formatted the way the business gave it to Google in the GMB dashboard.

Also, if you go to Google Maps, the businesses on the right side of "535 S 500 E" are formatted "535 500 E" (without the "S") and the business on the left side actually include the "S", ie "499 E 500 S". Why is Google treating one side of the street different than the other?

Finally, if you look at Google Maps (and Mapmaker even) Google clearly labels the whole street "535 S 500 E". But, again, for some reason, the businesses on the right side are missing the "S" and are just "535 500 E".

Google is a strange beast.

At the end of the day, I think I should go with "535 500 E" as that's what Google Maps turned his address into when he inputted it into the GMB dashboard and it's also what Google+ formatted it to (they feed off of each other of course).

I think I should ignore Mapmaker because it looks like it pushes the address as given by the business owner in the GMB dashboard, not how Google likes to see the address.

Agree/disagree?

 

[JoyHawkins]

Hey Joshua,

That link you listed on Maps is for the compound building at that address which you can see on MapMaker here: https://www.google.com/mapmaker?gw=39&fid=0x8752f7f065aa2b3d:0xa79f67af7e5aa179

On that listing, it has the address set to 500 S, which is the yellow highway whereas S 500 E appears to run north/south.

These appear to be completely different roads. Since the building is literally in the corner, the address for this business could technically be on either street and I would say the customer knows best. If he says his address is 535 S 500 E, that is the white road that runs north/south and MapMaker is wrong. This can easily be corrected if it's wrong.

Also looking at the actual roads, the yellow one, 500 S has 2 names on MapMaker. It's 500 South and East 500 South. So I can see how that can easily be confusing but it's totally distinct and different than S 500 E.

These people in Utah need to find better names for their roads

 

[JoshuaMackens]

Hey Joshua,

That link you listed on Maps is for the compound building at that address which you can see on MapMaker here: https://www.google.com/mapmaker?gw=39&fid=0x8752f7f065aa2b3d:0xa79f67af7e5aa179

On that listing, it has the address set to 500 S, which is the yellow highway whereas S 500 E appears to run north/south.

These appear to be completely different roads. Since the building is literally in the corner, the address for this business could technically be on either street and I would say the customer knows best. If he says his address is 535 S 500 E, that is the white road that runs north/south and MapMaker is wrong. This can easily be corrected if it's wrong.

Also looking at the actual roads, the yellow one, 500 S has 2 names on MapMaker. It's 500 South and East 500 South. So I can see how that can easily be confusing but it's totally distinct and different than S 500 E.

These people in Utah need to find better names for their roads

Believe it or not, I messed up my example and his address is actually "535 East 500 South". So that's the yellow road?

And why is Google Maps and Google+ trying to format it down to "535 500 S"? Edit: Ahh, because you said that road has 2 names, correct? And one of them is just "500 S", yes? How do you find the names of the roads?

Which version should I use? Mapmaker's version of "535 East 500 South" or Maps version of "535 500 S". I'm inclined to go Maps since it's the more public interface.

I'm sure all of this is semantical at some level but I am genuinely curious what would be the "proper" way

 

[JoyHawkins]

Yes.

White Road: South 500 East
Yellow Road: 500 South or East 500 South


You can find the names of the routes in MapMaker. Here is the record for South 500 East.

I would go with what MapMaker has. You can always tell if you have the right road or not by seeing which one they matched you with in the drop-down when you're in edit mode on MapMaker.

It's seriously not the easiest product to work with. LONG learning curve with next-to-no tutorials.

 

[Jason Rogers]

I always checkwith the post office. Search "USPS zip lookup".

 

[JoyHawkins]

I always checkwith the post office. Search "USPS zip lookup".

Google maps by physical addresses, not postal addresses. There are tons of cases where these are different so I would always avoid going by what the post office says because Google won't always agree with it.

I live in one of these situations. My home address is physically located in town A whereas my mailing address is in town B. Google would go by town A.

 

[Jason Rogers]

Thanks Joy. Good to know. I heard the exact opposite advice ad MozCon Local. Digging in to mapmaker is great advice.

 

[JoyHawkins]

Oh no! Let me know who said it and I'll be sure to tease them about it haha

 

[Linda Buquet]

Google maps by physical addresses, not postal addresses.

Joy is def right about that.

Thanks Joy. Good to know. I heard the exact opposite advice ad MozCon Local. Digging in to mapmaker is great advice.

But I can understand a data aggregator or citation service saying that because a long standing company that has lots of natural citations propagating out there (not ones anyone submitted) - most directory listings would be based on whatever the USPS address formatting is. And I assume if the address submitted is different enough, it would create a dupe listing in some directories. So these dual address listings can be tricky.

I agree with Joy, you should normally use the physical address G maps uses in GMB. But in cases where there are already 2000 natural citations for the USPS address it can get tricky.