In the sequel of my examination into online maps services. I will highlight a major usability issue in Google Maps which affects its ability to produce decent location results. In this entry, I will not be pointing out other little amusing quirks (as there are probably a few floating around) and will instead focus on USABILITY. Google Search is highly touted for producing good relevant search results; unfortunately, the same cannot be said for Google Maps.
Once again, the following problem exists in other map services. I don't want to be calling them out explicitly. However, Google is the one most well-known for its great algorithms, great search results and ability to simplify things for consumers. It is hard to deny these attributes in the search space.
So what is the scenario at hand?
Google cannot recognize the location without the "th" in an Avenue.
First, try typing in "148 ave ne, Redmond, WA" into maps.google.com. Now, type in "148th ave ne, Redmond, WA". Try this out on other numerical streets or avenues.
SEARCH RESULT FOR: 148 ave ne, Redmond, WA
SEARCH RESULT FOR: 148th ave ne, Redmond, WA
Some people may question whether this is a usability issue at all. But just consider the following points:
- In Google Search, if you mispell something, it will even produce a Search Result that suggests an alternate Search (with corrected Spelling) at the top. In this scenario, nothing was misspelled. In fact, it was only missing a suffix. And even that is questionable. If on the other hand, the Avenue was literally called "First Avenue", that may be a different story.
- When you type a URL into your browser, do you always type "http://" as the prefix? What happens if you don't (NOTE: you still get your desired behavior of seeing a web page). Would you have been annoyed if in this day and age, you received an error when you attempted to navigate to a site without providing the entire URL? This is something we have come to expect out of browsers.
If Google Maps cannot produce the correct location, it should at least provide a decent suggested result (aka "Did you mean:"). Perhaps at Google, the engineers have already labeled this as "By Design". While this is a minor design issue, it is definitely something that affects the entire user experience. They did not simplify things for consumers on this one.