An open letter to Google

I 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:

  1. Your main search is not as smart in geolocation to be zipcode-aware and find the right Pittsburg from the zip.
  2. Your Maps feature is pretty smart relative to finding the right results even when given some erratic information in the query.
  3. 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

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