An open letter to Google
Sunday, April 30th, 2006I had an entertaining Google Maps search that gave me better-than-should-have-been results and then a failure, showing that one of your systems knows more than the other and they aren’t 100% tied together.
First I searched for an address…
http://www.google.com/search?btnG=Google+Search&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=firefox&q=1000%20lislin%20court%20pittsburg%2094565
and got back a page with one link on it to Maps, which is what I expected. I didn’t read it closely, or I would have discovered it was wrong, with the zip and state mismatched.
“Map of 1000 Lislin Court, Pittsburg, IL 94565″
I clicked it and went to
http://maps.google.com/maps?oi=map&q=1000+Lislin+Court,+Pittsburg,+IL+94565
which let me browse the map I wanted perfectly… never noticing that I was looking at California maps with an Illinois state label.
However, I clicked on the Driving Directions, entered my origin, and it refused to show me the directions since it was confused as to my destination. From this I draw three conclusions:
- Your main search is not as smart in geolocation to be zipcode-aware and find the right Pittsburg from the zip.
- Your Maps feature is pretty smart relative to finding the right results even when given some erratic information in the query.
- Your driving directions don’t inherit Maps’ good sense but take things much more literally.
You’re known for good user interface, and Maps made it work very well – enough to fool me that there was no bad data. I suggest you work on your interapplication handoffs so they meet the shining example of the rest of your features.
Best wishes,
The Advocate
www.useradvocate.com