Google Giving the Wrong Information for Hervey Bay
More and more people around the world are turning to Google Maps to find the way to places they want to visit. But just how accurate is the information that you get from Google Maps?
Last week I wanted to give my daughter in Sydney some idea of where the Augustus subdivision was in Hervey Bay so played around with Google Maps and was able to email her a URL that displayed the area around Urraween and Eli Waters.
While I was looking at the map I discovered that Hervey Bay hospital was shown on the map as being on the western side of Maryborough Road. Follow this link and you’ll see it for yourself
It’s the pink oblong that appears to left and slightly above the the Urraween place name.
Of course that’s not where the hospital is at all and someone else pointed that out to me today. They also asked me what could be done to have Google show the hospital in its correct location on the corner of Urraween Road and Nissen Road.
Unfortunately the answer to that question is, probably not much. It takes some digging to find any link that allows you to contact anyone at Google about errors on their map and when you do get to that link it really only seems to be interested in you if in the US, China and three other countries - none of which are Australia.
I’m told that the placement of the Hervey Bay hospital isn’t the only problem with the Hervey Bay map so perhaps it would be unwise to place too much trust in Google and their maps at this point in time.
But at least the problem isn’t quite as bad as one complaint to Google Maps that I came across. One woman in the United States was complaining that Google was showing her long driveway as a main link road and lots of people were ending up in her front yard.
Hmmm - you’ve gotta love technology … when they get it right.
June 24th, 2007 at 6:32 am
I had a similar issue with the directions part of the Google site last August. I was driving in from Beerwah and staying in a motel in Pialba. The directions took me all the way up to the Tourquay end of the bay when in actual fact an earlier left turn would have put me in Pialba.
Thankfully I had spotted that it looked wrong on the printed map and decided for the first time to turn in the GPS in the hire car which got the right directions.
Just goes to show, if you want to get it right don’t trust google directions (made in the USA) but stick to good old Aussie made GPS!
June 24th, 2007 at 9:35 am
Thanks for adding your comment Nigel. Last year in the northern hemisphere’s autumn there was a report of a family of three who got stuck travelling on some back roads on the west coast of the United States. They were using a mapping programme that showed that the road they were following as being quite a main road.
In actual fact the ‘main’ road was something of a bush track and impassable after heavy rain. Ordinary paper maps and GPS maps showed that but not the mapping programme they were using.
They got stuck for over a week and by the time the authorities found them the husband had died of exposure after he had tried to go for help.