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Google's motto, "Don't be evil," should be changed to, "Do what everyone else does better, but for free." Nearly every product Google has produced can be touted as a killer app, especially when it comes to Google Maps. Google has added some hot new features to its Maps; like traffic meters, street view, bus routes, small pix images of people sunbathing, the list goes on. In 2005, Google launched Local Business Center which allows shop owners to lay claim to listings displayed on map search results. This was a serious boon to small businesses that allowed their listings to be on equal footing with large corporations. Maps and LBC fall under the Google umbrella which makes integrating AdWords and search results extremely convenient.

That is, until I had to use it.

Managing a website for a local comic shop means I have to make sure Google sees my client in the best possible light. All of our products must display correctly in Google Base, the site uses SEO, and Maps points to our location with our store front photos and rave reviews for all to see using Google's Local Business Center. Then why is it that Google thinks my client is located on the highway and not at the shopping center?

Google's map results some from scouring the web for addresses as well as the use of third party information (like Yellow Pages). The problem, in my case, is that no where can I find this mysterious highway address being used in reference to my client. In any case, this is where the Local Business Center allows owners to correct mistakes, fix map markers, or simply suppress wrong listings. Owners can verify by phone or by regular mail with a given PIN code whatever edits were submitted are set for the next index update, which is supposed to be about four weeks. According to some shops owners, four weeks has come and gone and Google is no where closer to resolving their listing woes.

Take Tina, for example. She runs a preschool. Even while she is registered with SuperPages as a preschool, Google has the listing filed under Performance Arts. Tina edited her listing from her LBC account but the change has yet to show up in Maps.

[All] I know is that my business is... "waiting for the next update", whatever that means. I've been in this state since May 30th. When I log into my account all the data that I entered seems to be reflected accurately so far.

Rich in Glen Spey, NY has had no luck getting rid of the multiple listings that appear for his shop Tech Lab 2020. In emailing him, I was struck by how similar his, mine and other's storied were. In the Google Maps discussion group this scenario is played out a lot. For Rich, what started out as a simple change from a PO Box number to a physical address has now grown into four listings, two of which still have the PO Box number.

Where I am today is waiting for the Google folks to at least tell me how long to wait for the suspensions to take effect so I can focus on the listings that are left. I dare not touch anything for now...

One of the worst things in all this, to my mind anyway, is how bad my firm looks now to searchers who find me seemingly spamming the Google listing service. We pride ourselves on our reputation and this makes us look underhanded, I think. Boy this sucks.

For whatever reason, it seems that once a listing is verified via the PIN number, a new record is added to one's LBC account. Multiple attempts to verify a listing creates multiple records. If a business owner deletes a records, it is released from ownership and added to Google Maps. The term "delete" implies removing records and not releasing them which has confused owners forcing them to follow up by reclaiming them for "suspension". From Rich again,

I reclaimed them and did my best to mark the (now 7) bad listings for suspension, but phone verification only worked on some of them, and NOT on the ones that had no proper address for post card verification! At this point, I have 8 listings in my LBC, one good one and 7 bad. The one good one, marked "Active" doesn't show up in searches, though 4 bad ones do.

And again, once marked for suspension, Google maintains it takes about four weeks to update their index even though several owners are still waiting well past the one month marked. Also, there isn't a way to simply consolidate all the records created in LBC into one, which for most shop owners, is all that is needed.

Response from Google has been slim. They have a form for users to submit trouble tickets, but there is no guarantee of reply. The group's discussion threads get the occasionally visit by Jen or Brian of the Google Maps team, but their replies are usually from a troubleshooting standpoint. It is the repeated complaints in the discussion group that go unnoticed.

So, to go back to my client for instance, Google Maps displays the wrong address first among the entire array of addresses. In fact, that first listing (the wrong one) references reader reviews, related photos, phone number, and website. Were someone to search among the all the listings, they would assume the first one to be more accurate. Several times a week, this local comic shop has to answer calls to customers who think they are somehow located on a highway.

For Tina, Rich and others, inaccuracies are not the main issue of their frustration nor is having to wait four weeks (supposedly) for a change. The main reason people have been getting frustrated over these problems is the lack of support needed to resolve them.

Chris Williams writes a weekly column for PopSyndicate.

[Update] The incorrect address has not been suppressed but rather changed to the correct address leaving multiple addresses for the one store.

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