Following the successful trial of the Venue Verification system using the SPAR locations last year (see old thread for the background), Waze have provided me with a new set of locations, this time for McDonald’s. Once again, I’d like to call upon the UK editor community to help get all these locations mapped in Waze, so we can give accurate data back to HQ.
To begin, this link will take you to page where you can set your starting coordinates (lat,lon or postcode) to find the nearest venue to you, or you can view them all in random order.
Checklist:
Name = McDonald’s <suffix>
Correct street and city address
Type = Point area
Category = Fast Food (plus any other relevant ones)
Navigation point to the entrance of the site
Linked to appropriate Google place
Locked to rank 3
Tick appropriate Services on More Info tab
Map car park and drive-thru segments as necessary
Once you’ve finished editing a place, select ‘Verify’ option and then ‘Next’. Behind the scenes, the system will look for that updated place and link it up to the data supplied by ad partner. It will also generate a ‘score’ based on how good a match it is - venues below 5 stars will pop up again to be re-edited.
Hoping to be getting partner data like this from Waze more often, so let’s see if we can get into the swing of it.
As ever, please do post below if you have any questions or suggestions.
Can you confirm for McDonalds that are located in a retail park, are we putting the retail park name in the Street field (as we do for all the other shops there) or the actual address show on the Venue Verification page?
Are we adding ‘Drive Thru’ as a suffix to those that provide it?
Are we agreed that McDonalds is NOT a Restaurant? A restaurant provides reservations, table service and paying the bill at the end, ie Miller & Carter, Zizzi.
If the retail park name is more appropriate, then go ahead and use that. It doesn’t have to match the verification page exactly in every instance.
No, I don’t think so, as there’s a specific option under Services that you tick for that.
I’m not convinced by this argument, no. McDonald’s calls itself a fast food restaurant, and is not hugely different from a pub restaurant (order and pay up front). A McDonald’s that is part of a food court, however, would be not-a-restaurant.
Two McDonald’s very close together. The Venue Verification ID: 627 McDonald’s Kings Cross Belgrove House is at lon=-0.12312&lat=51.53011. The lat/lon provided in the system for that is for the 302/304 A501 - Pentonville Rd, ID: 1041.
Can I remind people to see whether the site has already been edited in the last day or so, and also to check the McDonald’s website locator for the details of the site. Both of those locations noted above were added by me yesterday using the McDonald’s website for confirming the details. Both are reported to offer delivery. Today, a L3 editor has visited both sites and removed the deliveries tick, which I’ve had to put back.
Have I missed something here? I can see that a McD inside a shopping centre, motorway services or on the high street should be a place point but I thought a sizeable freestanding McD which includes a drive thru should be an area (including the Drive Thru road, but not the car park). Treated the same as a “Drive Thru” Petrol Station.
A typical McDonald’s building (not including drive through) is not quite large enough nor notable enough to be added as an area landmark.
Petrol stations are special cases as the defined area was thought to have special properties within the app, though I’m not convinced that they do. Service areas have point places for fuel stations without any issue.
By <suffix>, we mean the McDonalds location. e.g. the place name should be “McDonalds Appleby Magna” or “McDonalds Nottingham Road” , not just McDonalds???
Can I confirm that we have to have the suffix, UK policy is to keep names as simple as possible if there is only 1 location in a city, the address being the defining feature :?: A lot of McDonald’s own names are roads when the district / town names would make more sense.
IMHO we should treat these in exactly the same way as everything else: If only one, just the company name. If several then use a “sensible - town or area name” suffix. Some of the ones I have seen on the McD list don’t even use the correct street name, they use the nearest big road!!
We don’t want to start making exceptions for some types or brands of place, we want consistency across them all on naming and point v area based on size. This then makes it easier for us and also for explaining how to do this to new editors as they come along.
I’ve seen several examples of the drive-thru segments being mapped as Private Roads. May I suggest this not be done and all segments be Parking Roads as Private Roads show congestion highlights and we don’t want this, drive through segments are going to see a lot of stationary traffic by its very nature.
Also, the navigation point should be the first segment into the car park, not the drive-thru, not everyone wants to use it :!:
I would agree with this especially as the data given is so random with towns, streets and other names (MSA = service area?) being used for different sites.
In line with other discussions I’d suggest the primary name should just be “McDonald’s” and then the address information should suffice. Any useful suffix that helps with searching can be added as a alternative name “McDonald’s <town>”
I much prefer the suffix and I feel it is making Waze worse by not having them for the average user, which are the people using the system daily.
It is already hard to tell one Aldi from another in the same town, but with multiple McDonalds in some towns it will only become harder.
Not everyone will know which street a particular McDonalds or any other company is in, however they are more likely to know suburbs - Bristol is a good example - large city, with multiple branches of the same company - to get anyone unfamiliar with every road to tell which branch is where is not user friendly. Smaller town as maybe not a problem, but in larger locations it is with more than one branch it is.
If the policy was if there is only one branch call it "brand’ - but if more than one exists call it ‘brand - whatever’ as defined by the company, it would be better.
We are here for the users at the end of the day, surely?
I thought this was the policy?
Most large cities have already had the ‘City’ address field split into suburbs, which shows in the search results.
Doing an app search for McDonald’s gave me the above results, interestingly, the ones simply named ‘McDonald’s’ have picked up the ad icon, and show the suburb on the second line. The one with the full name has scrolled onto the second line, obscuring the address/suburb info.
