Google Maps Doesn't Know How Street Addresses Work

Summary

I was driving around Vernon, BC a few weeks ago and I asked Google Maps for directions to 3207 30th Ave. It confidently told me where to go but luckily my passenger noticed that it was actually directing me to 3207 34th Ave, four blocks north. Well that’s odd. A few days later my cousin asked me (as the ex-Google still-nerd member of the family) if I could help with a Google Maps issue. The problem was that the address 138 W 6th Ave in Vancouver was being mapped at a location 2.4 km (that’s 1.5 miles or 123 furlongs) away from the actual location. I could visualize the absurdity of where it maps the W 6th Ave address by asking Google Maps for directions between 136 W 6th Ave and 138 W 6th Ave. These addresses are adjacent in real life, but Google Maps gave me this: That’s a long walk to get to the building next door. There’s another fun way to visualize this bug. Search for “Clark & Page Casting Studios” in Google Maps. Then copy its address, shown in Google Maps, to the clipboard and ask for directions to Clark & Page Casting Studios from its address. This should be a zero-meter walk, but of course it isn’t. Instead it is, no surprise, a 2.4 km walk from Clark & Page Casting Studios to its address. Fun! Or this silliness. If you navigate from “138 W 6th Ave Unit 1B” to “138 W 6th Ave #2b” then it is, you guessed it, a 2.4 km walk. This error was pointed out to me because apparently aspiring actors kept going to the wrong place and being late for their auditions. These mistakes have real-world consequences. There are more Finding one error is curious, but two suggests a pattern. I started browsing Google Maps looking for addresses that seemed out of place. I quickly found three more. 1951 W 19th Ave in Vancouver is mapped at a 2.1 km walk from where its address should logically be. It should be in the 1900 block of W 19th Ave but is instead placed ten blocks away by Google Maps: 1355 W 17th Ave, North Vancouver is a particularly odd case because it is mapped as bein...