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How to label very small stores like 7-11 + parking Lot

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Hey Guys,

Read through the guide and I didn't find an answer for how to label very small parking lots/stores like 7-11.

Should a small 7-11 + small 7-11 parking lot be labeled:

parking lot = own landmark/ 7-11 = own landmark OR
7-11 + parking lot = 1 landmark (7-11)

Does driving into a landmark that is not a parking lot take you off the road?

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Post by adetia
I think the idea of not entering a "landmark" for parking lots is good (though I have myself been guilty of this), unless it is a parking facility. Landmarking shopping centers helps you get your bearings, in my opinion, where as landmarking a single store adds to alot of clutter.

All in all, I think rather then belaboring the point over and over, someone (thats been around awhile) just needs to come up with a standard, and perhaps run a vote, if a consensus amongst the voters is reached, adopt it as policy and move on until something in the client facilitates a better system. These grey areas make for alot of redundant work and also end up in some people getting messages over conflicting information, and not knowing which way is proper. I know that I'm a much better editor now then I was a few months ago, and still have alot of room for improvement, but in the spirit of offering a solution, this would be my points for consideration:

1. Landmark parking structures, especially in places like urban areas where parking is an issue
2. Landmark shopping centers as the perimeter of the building.
3. No landmarks for single businesses - unless this is a gas station, or commonly used directional landmark, like, in Lethbridge, AB, we have a watertower that has been converted into a restaurant. It sticks up above the skyline and people often use it as a basis for directions. As this is subjective, use your best judgement.
4. For very large landmarks (think airport, disneyworld, etc), mark the area that a person would be driving to -- like, the terminal as opposed to the runway.
5. Landmark schools, parks as they can also provide a visual heads up of reduced speed zones.

One other random observation is that when I use "outsourced" data source results, like yelp, etc, from within waze, it almost never routes me to the proper place - it simply takes me to the "center" of the street where the business is located -- this may be a problem specific to my portion of Canada, I don't know.
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Post by AlanOfTheBerg
CBenson wrote:
jasonh300 wrote:Landmarks aren't searchable. Therefore, that McDonald's is going to come up in the text search whether it's landmarked or not.
They do for me.
I've been able to search landmarks for the past month.
http://www.waze.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=43335
I get a hit result for a small kids park in my neighborhood. It's also in 4sq and facebook, but the Waze results also show what I'd expect from the Waze results, including that it is in "Oregon" and is missing the name of my city because the landmark doesn't have it entered.

So, it would appear that (some people?) landmark searching is working. My primary and test accounts all get these results, so it's not a matter of the search engine testing either.
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Post by AlanOfTheBerg
iainhouse wrote: Perhaps a viable solution would be for Waze to give a landmark a "navigation point": something very similar to house numbers? You would specify a single point on an adjacent segment (or one inside the landmark) as the destination that should be routed to for that landmark.
Landmarks in cartouche had this but they never worked right. I've heard rumors that Waze is trying to get this working again. You would create a spot associated with the landmark, specify what type of spot it was (entrance or exit road for example) and move it over a roadway.
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Post by AndyPoms
Remember, Individual businesses (except Gas Stations) should not be added to the map.
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Post by AndyPoms
CBenson wrote:
AndyPoms wrote:Remember, Individual businesses (except Gas Stations) should not be added to the map.
This seems like an odd way of stating this. As what I'm hearing is that parking lots that are individual businesses, whether municipally or privately run, should be added to the map as landmarks.
Where are you seeing this?
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Post by AndyPoms
We're trying to get Parking Lot Roads to display differently in the client. There is also a distinction between Landmarks & Points of Interest - a 7-Eleven is a POI and not a Landmark. A Hospital is both a Landmark and a POI. Waze currently uses multiple third party providers for POI search (the tabs at the bottom of the search results).

Remember, one should only be mapping large lots at this time because of the display issue in the client.
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Post by AndyPoms
skapur1 wrote:1. People are confusing POIs with landmarks. Since Waze does not allow editors to add POIs but allows editors to add landmarks, editors add landmarks when they really want to add POIs. In theory, POIs are searchable whereas landmarks are viewable. They are very similar and related concepts.
EXACTLY!!!!
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Post by AndyPoms
adetia wrote:All in all, I think rather then belaboring the point over and over, someone (thats been around awhile) just needs to come up with a standard, and perhaps run a vote, if a consensus amongst the voters is reached, adopt it as policy and move on until something in the client facilitates a better system.
We're pretty close to a US Standard - we just need to review the last round of comments (I was handling this, but things at my real job got crazy, so it got delayed a bit). See http://www.waze.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=129&t=38934 for more info.
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Post by CBenson
AndyPoms wrote:Remember, Individual businesses (except Gas Stations) should not be added to the map.
This seems like an odd way of stating this. As what I'm hearing is that parking lots that are individual businesses, whether municipally or privately run, should be added to the map as landmarks.
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Post by CBenson
jasonh300 wrote:Parking lots are also handled by foursquare.

Individual businesses who want to appear on the map should visit biz.waze.com and pay for an ad.
jasonh300 wrote:My interpretation of cbenson's post is that he is saying that privately owned for-profit parking lots should be landmarked...not parking lots of individual businesses.

This would still be wrong because the foursquare POIs should put the [P] pin on those parking lots as you approach your destination.

The more landmarks on the map, the less value they have.
Right, I just didn't think it made much sense to follow-up Harlings post regarding the distinction between general parking lots and parking lots for specific business with the statement that individual businesses should not be mapped.
I'm not advocating putting parking lot landmarks on the map (or any landmarks for that matter). But I don't find these arguments against lots to be compelling.
1) I wouldn't think that the buisiness development or marketing people at waze agree with the statement that "Individual businesses who want to appear on the map should visit biz.waze.com and pay for an ad." The best place to put your ad is where your potential customers are already looking for information. If many people already use waze to find the closest MacDonald's for lunch on the road, then it makes it that much more lucrative for Taco Bell to advertize to divert some of those potential customers. There is a difference between an ad and a mere listing. This why you used to pay for ad in the yellow pages over a mere listing. It is also why the yellow pages included your listing whether you paid for an ad or not. I highly suspect that best way for waze to turn a profit is to gather as much information as possible, including the locations of individual businesses. However, I'm neither a marketing expert or in charge of waze, so its certainly possible that I'm just wrong.
2)The foursquare lots that come up at the end of your route don't seem very useful to me as I don't really want to make the decision of where to park when I'm within a few block of my destination. One of the advantages of using a navigation app like waze is to determine where you are going and the best way to get there before you start. The current parking lot scheme seems to turn that advantage on its head. In DC where I commute, a few block difference in destination can cause waze to completely change your route into town. Thus, the fastest route to a parking lot a few blocks from your "destination" can be very different from the fastest route to the "destination." I'd rather route to the parking lot from the beginning of the trip.

Again I'm not advocating more landmarks, I just don't buy the argument that waze couldn't use the information. I do buy the argument that when we add excessive landmarks, with the existing system it doesn't help the wazer.
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