There is a marketing agency that has a place marker on Google Maps called ‘NEC Birmingham’ this of course is causing problems for Waze users and based on the GMaps reviews also on their navigation.
When it first appeared last year I was able to change the name on Google Map Maker and things improved. It has now changed back and my repeated edit requests are being ignored. I’ve also tried to send a general feedback about this but Google doesn’t give a damn.
Waze has a Place marker for the building (Permalink) but I can’t see how linking them would help as it would still incorrectly route users.
I’m assuming we can’t block this data from Google… Any suggestions welcome.
I haven’t a simple solution but I have reported this problem to google. If enough of us do this they might respond!
I’ve also suggested a change to the name…strength in numbers 
AIUI, linking a Google place to a Waze one means that the Waze position will then always be used, no matter whether the user selects the Waze or Google result when they search for a destination. So linking this bogus Google place to the correct Waze place for the NEC should then prevent any routing to the bogus location…
Cheers for the obvious Chris, I couldn’t get my head to that… I was linking the wrong way :?
I guess that is the problem when two different destinations have a similar name, in this case “NEC Birmingham Ltd” which is a private company and “The NEC” which is of course the exhibition centre.
In this case the company director may solve the problem for us because he has applied to have the company struck off :lol: which providing no one objects normally takes around three months.
It may sound harsh but it’s really the users responsibility to be more careful which result they select, surely we can’t demand that Google remove a legitimate companies details just because some users may select the wrong result.
Should we demand that Big Ben Limited in East Sussex be removed because if someone selects that destination they will be a bit disappointed when they arrive and find they are 70 miles from the Elizabeth Tower in London that contains Big Ben? :roll:
What if someone enters Halifax intending to go to a bank branch in (select your nearest town) and instead gets directed up the M1 to the town in West Yorkshire.
BTW there is an American company called NEC, they have an office in West London…
Whilst in general I agree with what you’re saying, I think this particular case highlights an important point about certain ambiguous search results. Unlike the other examples you give, where it should be painfully obvious to all but the entirely devoid of common sense that the alternative locations aren’t the ones of interest, in this case the “NEC Birmingham” result is at least in the right ballpark compared with where someone not intimately familiar with the actual location of the NEC would consider it reasonable for Waze to say it was.
In addition, also bear in mind that both the NEC itself, along with various other individuals and organisations when talking about it, frequently refers to the place as the “NEC Birmingham”, so it’s not unreasonable for a user to use that search term when searching for the NEC rather than because they’re trying to locate a private company by the same name.
Now, in this case, given that the “NEC Birmingham” Google result does appear to relate to a legitimate (for the near future at least) business and isn’t just someone trying to game Google Maps by submitting completely false business data, it wouldn’t therefore be appropriate to link the Google result for this business to the actual NEC place in Waze.
However, it would be entirely appropriate to add “NEC Birmingham” as an alternate name to the NEC place - whilst this wouldn’t then inhibit the inclusion of this other Google location in the search results, it may at least help steer some people more in the right direction.
Something else that might also help would be to set up a valid Waze place for “NEC Birmingham Ltd” which could then be linked to the Google “NEC Birmingham” result. As this would then cause Waze to return a result for “NEC Birmingham Ltd” instead of simply “NEC Birmingham”, this may give users enough of a clue that perhaps this isn’t the NEC they’re looking for, and to then continue looking through the list of search results for something more suitable. If not, then the inclusion of suitable place details (e.g. something in the description along the lines of “A marketing agency, NOT the National Exhibition Centre!”) ought to them nudge all but the aforementioned common sense deprived users in the right direction…
Thanks Twister, excellent suggestions.
When I searched for NEC Birmingham marketing agency I couldn’t find it in the first 20 results on google!
I found the proper NEC and found other marketing agencies, so I had assumed at best it wasn’t a good marketing agency as it couldn’t enable me to find it!
Your suggestions are a very good way helping users whilst not (potentially) harming this business.