How does Google Maps determine where to put the little pointer when you search for a particular city, but don’t specify a street address? I’ve noticed that the chosen spot in my town is a little strange:
That spot drops you onto one of the most heavily-traveled streets in town. The large building to the East is a collection of automotive repair shops and the like; to the West are private residences. And it’s nowhere near the middle of town.
It’s also interesting that the spot has changed. Google used to put the pointer right in the downtown area, but at the end of a run-down, dead-end street between warehouses next to the railroad tracks.
The important thing to note is that this spot also serves as the endpoint of your journey if you use Google Maps to, say, plot a route from your city to Wenatchee (again, without specifying a specific street address).
So why do they pick these strange, inconvenient spots? Why not put the pointer on City Hall or something?
Most printed maps put the dot at the place where the City Hall is located, but in one example I just tried, that’s not where google put it.
Could it be the geographic center? i.e., at a latitude exactly halfway between the northernmost and southernmost points in the town, and at a longitude exactly halfway between the easternmost and westernmost points?
Google is fairly secretive about how they actually program their web tools, but, knowing their fondness for evolving the user experience based on overall activity, here’s a wild guess: Maybe the “city endpoint” for nonspecific city destinations is an average (or other weighted calculation) of all the endpoints when the various requesting users do indicate an actual address. Then you get sort of an aggregate version of “where” the city is, based on traffic, i.e. where people typically go when they get there.
Nah, this is way down near the south end of town, about a quarter mile from the bridge you would have crossed to enter the city from the south. (That street is, in fact, connected to the end of the bridge.)
Interestingly, the residential area to the west of that point on my map is also one of the oldest, poorest areas of Wenatchee.
(Unrelated note: Netscape 9’s spell checker recommends the spelling “generalissimo” for your username )
Cervaise - interesting idea.
Of course, I realize that most people who use Google Maps to locate Wenatchee aren’t going to make a point of following the directions right to the last step. They’re going to see the “Welcome to Wenatchee” sign at the edge of town and know they’re here.
Have your neighboring Zip Codes changed, at all, recently?
Have your search arguments included the Zip Code?
Around my neighborhood, (and a couple other locales I checked), the arrow seems to show up in the geographic center of the Zip Code. (Which means that if you have a decent sized town, but the Post Office handles a number of routes extending off in a particular (relatively unpopulated) direction, Google map will place the arrow outside town in that direction, but an even difference from both sides of the Zip Code boundaries (and using Zip+4 does not affect the location, at all.)
Of course, if you are getting odd results when you have not entered a Zip Code, I have no serious answer…
Nope, again. But now that you’ve mentioned it, I tried entering in only the ZIP code. Now it puts the arrow in the middle of an orchard on the NW edge of town.
When I enter the zip code I get a pointer near the geographical center. The town recenly annexed a bunch of land to the south & some time in the last 6 months the pointer moved with it; it used to be across the street from my house (very handy) & now it’s a half-mile south of where it was.
When I enter “town name, state” I get a pointer right on City Hall. But … City hall moved about 18 months ago & the pointer is at the old location, not the new.
When I enter “town name” (no state), I get a pointer near but not at the zip pointer and the returned address in the white legend balloon is “our town - other older unincorporated area name that used to encompass our town before the 1970s, state”.
So clearly I’m finding 3 different locations depending on how I search.
I also discovered Google search is context-aware or at least recent search-aware. Having searched for my zip code I then put just my street name (a fairly oddball two word name) into the search box. It found my street in my town. I then opened a fresh browser & put in just the street name in quotes. It found nothing.
As to the OP’s Wenatchee, is that name applied to anything else? Is there a Wenatchee county? Wenatchee river? Lake Wenatchee? etc.
Gretna, Louisiana points directly to a side door of the historic (and still active) Gretna City Hall and Courthouse.
70053 lands about 6 blocks away from there, but from a rough North to South and East to West measurement, it’s the geographic center of the zip code, which covers all 4 square miles of incorporated City of Gretna and nothing else.
ETA: Another note is that the courthouse doesn’t really have an address since it’s on the median of a wide boulevard. 200 Huey P. Long Ave. is on one side and 201 is on the other with the courthouse in the middle. So the mailing address is “2nd and Huey P. Long Ave.”
I couldn’t make any of these address combinations point to that same side door of the courthouse though.
New York City gets you outside a shop called “Quetnoz Sub” on Chambers Street (off Broadway), right beside a chap standing next to a bicycle. Heh, Street View is cool.
I’m actually a little surprised at where Google points to for Montreal - it’s a few streets over from where I assumed it would be. Street numberings on the Island start at the Lachine Canal/St. Lawrence river and go “north” across the island, and the east-west numberings start at St. Laurent Boulevard and go away from there. So I expected the Google arrow to be at St. Laurent and de la Commune (the docks) but it isn’t… it’s at Berri and the Ville-Marie Expressway.
I suppose that is somewhat close to the bus terminal, though.
There’s “East Wenatchee”, which is across the Columbia River and in a different county, and has its own ZIP code. The Wenatchee River is to the north of town, but outside the city limits, and flows into the Columbia. Lake Wenatchee is a good distance away.
There is also a “West Wenatchee” (which is where the pointer landed when I used just the ZIP code), and a “South Wenatchee”. I’m not sure why those names still appear on maps. If they were ever actual towns in their own right, they sure aren’t now. I’m pretty sure both were annexed into Wenatchee proper long ago. Even if they haven’t been officially annexed yet, I’ve never met anybody who says “I’m from West Wenatchee” or “I’m from South Wenatchee”.
Interestingly, if you type in “South Wenatchee, WA” and “Appleyard, WA”, you get exactly the same spot on the map.
ETA: I should add that “Wenatchee” was the name of the Native American tribe that lived in the area way back when, which is why the name is applied to places in such a widespread area. In addition to the places I’ve already listed, there is also the Wenatchee National Forest.
“Cupertino CA” and “Cupertino City Hall” don’t yield QUITE the same pointers, and the former is actually a slightly more accurate pointer to it. “Cupertino City Hall” parks you on a street intersection for the block the building is on (Rodrigues and Torre). “Cupertino CA” parks you in the middle of the block, in front of the actual building.
If I was mayor I would install a giant Google Arrow at the spot in town it normally shows up on the Google map so the satellite photos will pick it up … just to make Google users scratch their heads when they see it online.
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