Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2019 May 15

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May 15

Wrong geo-coordinates, obviously without connection

The corporation I work for uses Google geocoding for addresses of business partners' stores. Unsurprisingly, often those coordinates are wrong for a number of different reasons (same address + town name exists more than once, typos...). Doing research on the reasons, I found the strange case of two addresses getting the same, and totally wrong coordinates in a different US state. The addresses are:

• A1 Quick Stop, 1674 Us Highway 130, 08902 North Brunswick, New Jersey
• B-B Beauty Salon, 149 Joyce Kilmer Ave, 08901 New Brunswick, New Jersey

Both stores have gotten the very same geo coordinates of longitude -72.54565, latitude 41.45634, which can be identified at gps-coordinates.net as Ponset, 06441 Connecticut, an uninhabitated spot of Cockaponset State Forest. As the address names don't share any similarity, I don't even have the vaguest idea how this could possibly have happened. Has anyone ever experienced something like that? --KnightMove (talk) 11:02, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

And now several thousands people all over the world (including me, of course!) start pasting these addresses into Google Maps to see what has went wrong. Do we need to mention search statistics bump...? :) CiaPan (talk) 13:24, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

All sorts of errors creep into the gigantic map software databases. Without knowing all the intricate details of every piece of software in the production and delivery of these maps, it's fruitless for us to speculate why this bug occurred, let alone why it apparently occurred twice.

If you're using Google Maps, report errors directly to Google; or report the error to whoever administers your map or business database. :Nimur (talk) 13:25, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

You're probably right. But to explain my question a bit more: There are also cases where the error can be deconstructed. For example, a German address Görna 10 was written without umlaut Goerna 10, and so the address of a Spanish store called Goerna Mecanizados was coded. My examples could have included a subtle pattern. I could have missed it, but it could have been clear to someone here who has encountered similar problems. --KnightMove (talk) 15:23, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

I think you're seeing a more benign version of the error described in this article : https://theweek.com/articles/624040/how-internet-mapping-glitch-turned-kansas-farm-into-digital-hell

Addresses that the computer can't locate are redirected to some default value for that region with a large margin of error. Unfortunately, most tools don't indicate the margin of error in the result, so to the user it looks like that default value is being returned with the same authority as any other response.

Nowadays, they supposedly make an effort to place those default values on uninhabited land, so that if there is a misunderstanding, at least it won't involve cops or pizza delivery men showing up at somebody's house. ApLundell (talk) 00:10, 17 May 2019 (UTC)

KnightMove, there is a significant problem with the addresses you gave — easy for a human to understand, but a computer might be confused. The zip code always appears at the end of a US address, not before the town name. Here's what you wrote (left) and what Americans would write (right):

• A1 Quick Stop
• 1674 Us Highway 130
• 08902 North Brunswick, New Jersey
• A1 Quick Stop
• 1674 US Highway 130
• North Brunswick, NJ 08902
•  
•  
•  

Capitalization is fine, and Google Maps knows how to handle United States postal abbreviations, so I suspect that it sees the zip code and interprets it as part of the town name, and since there's no New Jersey town called "08902 North Brunswick", it rejects the location as invalid and returns its default value. (And yes, there are occasional places with numeric names, e.g. 84, Pennsylvania or 76, Kentucky.) Could you try searching for A1 Quick Stop, 1674 Us Highway 130, North Brunswick, New Jersey 08902? Thank you. Nyttend (talk) 22:18, 17 May 2019 (UTC)

@Nyttend: Thanks for the infos. The wrong format is actually my bad. We have stored the address data in a DB, they are uploaded in a CSV file, and the order for those two is the same as for all the others, most of which get the correct coordinates.

@ApLundell: Thanks, this is interesting. But I wonder: The "center" of what entity including New Jersey could this spot in Connecticut be? --KnightMove (talk) 06:53, 21 May 2019 (UTC)

Well, so much for that idea...I guess Google's smarter in that realm than I imagined :-) Connecticut is basically at the center of what's nowadays the cultural/economic northeastern United States. If you take all the coastal states from Maryland north, you'll see that Connecticut's pretty much midway between southeastern Maryland and northernmost Maine, and between westernmost Maryland and easternmost Maine. (In short, basically BosWash plus northern New England.) I can't prove it of course, but it's at least a coincidence. Nyttend (talk) 23:08, 22 May 2019 (UTC)