5 years after our house was built, the street and our address still hadn’t been added to Google Maps, which caused much confusion for delivery drivers. We managed to get Google to add our address to their map, but they mistakenly listed it as Circuit instead of Court. My husband and I have tried regularly, for the last couple of years, to edit the address, but so far Google has ignored our corrections.
Now, the latest annoying issue is that when I shop online, when I decline to use the pop up menu for my address and enter it by hand, some retailers tell me that my address doesn’t exist and that therefore my order cannot go through.
Does anyone out there have any suggestions for how I can get Google to correct my address?
Send your parcels to Parcel Collect at the post office or add more detailed notes or delivery instructions where that is possible. Not ideal I know but coercing a megamonster like Google seems a losing proposition.
It depends on your situation but the trip to the PO may waste less time than arguing with dumb software, chasing missing deliveries or being unable to place some orders.
It might help if you were to make the correction on Open Streetmaps and Waze as well. Google might then pick up from there. Especially Waze, since that is google owned.
It’s possible approaching your local council and respective State/Territory Govt and local members may lead to finding someone who is willing to help and sufficiently influential to get Google to respond.
We’ve a similar experience with near neighbours and road names. I suspect Google is extra cautious about making any name changes, rather than additions. Consider it’s Google’s time and effort required to resolve or verify the information. In our instance it appears that Google has responded to a local business that has adopted for its street address that of an adjoining road. Possibly for commercial convenience, and ease of its customers finding it. Our rural area has numerous roads which have named and contiguous road reserves. They may or may not exist in disjointed sections or not at all.
In our experience after several approaches to council and state re the issues it has caused with lost drivers, it appears Council has renamed one portion of road to suit the business. Hence no need for Google to do anything on that count! Although our road remains in part incorrectly identified. Fortunately not incorrect for our house number.
We live on a ‘Close’. Auspost databases show it as that but some maps call it a ‘Clos’. Parcels get to us either way. Some ‘errors’ are on purpose to use as evidence for copyright or license infringements.
As a thought have you tried using ‘Ct’ as a manual entry? I suspect it would not change the returned error but maybe worth a try.
Try your local council. They may be able to contact Google to ensure that Google mapping is consistent with their own naming conventions. They may have more clout than an individual.
I guess the starting point would be to prove that you are correct and that Google is not.
Have you confirmation from Council that you are correct? Have you confirmation from Australia Post that you are correct?
Who actually is the definitive source of this information in Australia? Is it available online?
Armed with solid evidence (and you don’t say whether you’ve already tried that) perhaps Google would be more responsive.
The converse of this is: maybe it’s wrong in e.g. the Australia Post database and every time you complain to Google, Google looks it up in the Australia Post database, thereby determines you to be incorrect, and does nothing.
In NSW it is the Geographic Names Board. It may have different names in other States but there will be an equivalent. In NSW they have the final say over road names, although local government and others may make suggestions. Perhaps @Kathel could look this up in their State as these bodies are all online AFAIK.
Local governments are responsible for naming roads (except for state-controlled roads) and maintaining a roads register (including roads in private estates and gated communities).
It there is any lack of certainty it’s whether the LGA keep the State and AP etc promptly informed of updates, or the State and AP fail to be ever vigilant promptly updating their mapping and registers. A polite observation is the relationships appear to be often tested, and discrepancy can be expected.
We are correct, confirmed by Council. I shall have to check with Australia Post. After years of living in the void, we asked Google to add our street to their maps, but instead of Court, they listed it as Circuit, which is incorrect.
Before I ask them to correct it, for the umpteenth time, I will check with Australia Post.
Thank you for your advice, everyone.
Someone with a different user name has the same problem on the google community pages
The easiest solution may be to petition yiour council to chage the road name from say Smith Circuit to Smith Circuit Road, or just wait
I am guessing, but the problem may be that the ANZ standard (not updated since 20110 does not match what appears for Australia in the Universall Postage Union standard and what is commonly used elsewhere. So the google staff change it, and it then may get get flipped back.
Australia and New Zealand ANZ 4819-2011 has not been updated since 2011, and does not match elsewhere (see below) and the abbreviation CCT is not used very
WAZE hbut it does not appear on the Universal Post Union list of Abbreviations for Australia (although they do for Canada
If the Google map address shows your property on Google Maps where it is located (when circuit is used as the descriptor), why not just use ‘circuit’ when buying online. This then avoids non-delivery because manually typed address is different to Google Maps address.
A danger is that when multiple parties are involved such as requiring the proper billing address (bank), the delivery address on the ordering form (merchant), and a delivery company who may use independent subbies, they would all need to use the same mapping service. Chances are there would still be mismatches in the odd case with an ‘address does not exist’ failure where the driver [tries to] meets the property.
I had a 2 years long non-delivery problem in the USA because the official street naming map, a US postal service database, was in error. Taking photos of the street signs, deed, tax notices, and so on were not enough to have it corrected quickly. It required multiple complaints at multiple levels with them always getting referred back to the local post office for ‘verification’ and whatever was [not] happening there, more inaction. I never understood why/how/who got it corrected but it eventually was.
There are a small number of mapping companies that produce digital maps used by ‘everything’ that are all inclusive from addresses to speed limits to name it. Finding out which one supplies google (probably google ) and contacting the mapping division rather than ‘google’ might get through the log jam?
Those of us who use GPS often get ‘no such address’ eg for number 2 but the map knows about 12 through 100 on the street, as an example, yet we cannot manage to get it fixed no matter how or how many times we report it. Maybe this irritation (or worse) is another aspect of that ‘online connected life’ we increasingly suffer?
) and contacting the mapping division rather than ‘google’ might get through the log jam?