Sorry for the delay. This goes back to PhantomSoul's post, but I'll explain it for what you posted immediately above.
When you search by name, it doesn't use the house number. It will try to find a Waze place name that matches within the immediate area (or matching place name with city info if you input that, but I'm not 100% sure). If it finds a matching Waze place, it will base the routing off that place and the closest segment, which might be a parking lot.
If Waze can't find it internally, it asks Google's POI map database. If Google returns a result, it will contain the POI name that google has, and latitude/longitude. Then, one more bit of magic happens. Waze takes the place name Google returned, and tries to find a matching Waze place close by to the target location. (It may use address info to help with that, but I don't recall offhand.) If it finds an exact match, it will use the Waze place as described above. If it can't find a match, it will use the Google coordinates, and then we're stuck with whatever Google has, which may be closer to the main road than to the PLR we mapped.
There's also one other thing to be aware of. Waze returns results as "autocomplete" while you type them (results show as a dropdown from the search field). Or it can allow you to do a full search (results show in a separate results screen, with tabs for various sources across the bottom - Waze, Google, Yelp, etc.) The results for autocomplete and full search work quite a bit differently, won't go into that here.
In your case, I searched for: Dunkin' Donuts, Lyndhurst, NJ
Waze started returning autocomplete results (Dunkin' Donuts / Valley Brook Avenue, Lyndhurst, NJ, United States), but I ignored them and did a full search.
In the Places tab (which is SUPPOSED TO BE all Waze's own place search results, no Google), I got:
* An advertisement for the Nutley store (Washington AVe)
* Five separate results for Valley Brook (only two of them together)
* Several other locations
* The five Lyndhurst locations - some of which have a pin icon, some a DD icon, none with an AD label:
1 Dunkin' Donuts / 425 Valley Brook Avenue, Lyndhurst, NJ (pin icon, position 2 in results list)
2 Dunkin Donuts / 425 Valley Brook Ave, Lyndhurst, NJ (DD icon, 3)
3 Dunkin Donuts / 437 Valley Brook Ave, Lyndhurst, NJ (pin, 5)
4 Dunkin' Donuts / 425 Valley Brook Avenue, Lyndhurst, NJ (pin, 12)
5 Dunkin Donuts / 425 Valley Brook Ave, Lyndhurst, NJ (pin, 3)
Note that some have the apostrophe in Dunkin' and some do not, some spells out Avenue in full, while some abbreviate Ave, most have address 425, but one has 437. All are the same distance in tenths of mile to my location.
The single Waze place in WME is missing the apostrophe and uses Ave, with an address of 437. Clearly, #3 (5th result) is the WME place.
THREE pins show on the search results map as well. I don't know if the other two are not present in the display, or hidden behind some of those that show. One shows between Valley Brook and this PLR. The other two are very close together, toward the back of the property, approximately where our Dunkin Donuts place is located.
Tapping on the pins, the one near the entrance has no apostrophe, abbreviates Ave, address 425. Of the other two, one (slightly to south) has no apostrophe, abbreviates Ave, address 437. The other (slightly to north) uses an apostrophe, spells out Avenue, address 425.
Switching over to Google Map Maker, I find a POI located at the back of the lot, apostrophe, Avenue, 425. Nothing near the front. Regular Google maps shows the same.
If I change tabs in Waze, I get:
SEARCH RESULTS TAB: Three results for Lyndhurst position, with three map pins, though one of them does not match the earlier pins. There is only one pin in the back of the lot instead of two, and there is a second at the front, near Delafield Ave. The results: 1 (ad, Dunkin, Ave, 425); 2 (Dunkin, 437, Ave); 6 (no name, no address, just shows "Lyndhurst, NJ" and a distance 1/10 mile different from others; tapping it displays the one near Delafield, and choosing EDIT in the app actually has a Waze photo, and shows a name and a DIFFERENT ADDRESS of 75 Main St, South River, NJ, pin at Thomas and Main). I really don't know what's up with that last one, there seems to be some weirded out connection between the front of lot pin not visible in WME and this other town's shop.
GOOGLE TAB: Single Lyndhurst result, bakc of lot, consistent with Google maps/GMM data.
FOURSQUARE TAB: Lots of results, none of them for Lyndhurst
YELP TAB: Don't ask
YELLOW PAGES TAB: Similar to FourSquare
What have we learned? There are lots of sources for the data, and we cant even identify some of them (which leads me to suspect ad data seeded some database but was coded incorrectly and doesn't show as ad). There is also possibly some corrupted data, and you could have been routing to the corrupted place as well. Most likely, you were routing to the address instead of the store name in some cases, and probably hitting the weird front of the lot one (that has no available source) other times. You may also have selected autocomplete, and I didn't check where that is currently sourced or targeted. Finally, as mentioned previously, if you have previously looked things up and subsequently fixed it, your phone might have old information that needs to be cleared.
When you search by name, it doesn't use the house number. It will try to find a Waze place name that matches within the immediate area (or matching place name with city info if you input that, but I'm not 100% sure). If it finds a matching Waze place, it will base the routing off that place and the closest segment, which might be a parking lot.
If Waze can't find it internally, it asks Google's POI map database. If Google returns a result, it will contain the POI name that google has, and latitude/longitude. Then, one more bit of magic happens. Waze takes the place name Google returned, and tries to find a matching Waze place close by to the target location. (It may use address info to help with that, but I don't recall offhand.) If it finds an exact match, it will use the Waze place as described above. If it can't find a match, it will use the Google coordinates, and then we're stuck with whatever Google has, which may be closer to the main road than to the PLR we mapped.
There's also one other thing to be aware of. Waze returns results as "autocomplete" while you type them (results show as a dropdown from the search field). Or it can allow you to do a full search (results show in a separate results screen, with tabs for various sources across the bottom - Waze, Google, Yelp, etc.) The results for autocomplete and full search work quite a bit differently, won't go into that here.
In your case, I searched for: Dunkin' Donuts, Lyndhurst, NJ
Waze started returning autocomplete results (Dunkin' Donuts / Valley Brook Avenue, Lyndhurst, NJ, United States), but I ignored them and did a full search.
In the Places tab (which is SUPPOSED TO BE all Waze's own place search results, no Google), I got:
* An advertisement for the Nutley store (Washington AVe)
* Five separate results for Valley Brook (only two of them together)
* Several other locations
* The five Lyndhurst locations - some of which have a pin icon, some a DD icon, none with an AD label:
1 Dunkin' Donuts / 425 Valley Brook Avenue, Lyndhurst, NJ (pin icon, position 2 in results list)
2 Dunkin Donuts / 425 Valley Brook Ave, Lyndhurst, NJ (DD icon, 3)
3 Dunkin Donuts / 437 Valley Brook Ave, Lyndhurst, NJ (pin, 5)
4 Dunkin' Donuts / 425 Valley Brook Avenue, Lyndhurst, NJ (pin, 12)
5 Dunkin Donuts / 425 Valley Brook Ave, Lyndhurst, NJ (pin, 3)
Note that some have the apostrophe in Dunkin' and some do not, some spells out Avenue in full, while some abbreviate Ave, most have address 425, but one has 437. All are the same distance in tenths of mile to my location.
The single Waze place in WME is missing the apostrophe and uses Ave, with an address of 437. Clearly, #3 (5th result) is the WME place.
THREE pins show on the search results map as well. I don't know if the other two are not present in the display, or hidden behind some of those that show. One shows between Valley Brook and this PLR. The other two are very close together, toward the back of the property, approximately where our Dunkin Donuts place is located.
Tapping on the pins, the one near the entrance has no apostrophe, abbreviates Ave, address 425. Of the other two, one (slightly to south) has no apostrophe, abbreviates Ave, address 437. The other (slightly to north) uses an apostrophe, spells out Avenue, address 425.
Switching over to Google Map Maker, I find a POI located at the back of the lot, apostrophe, Avenue, 425. Nothing near the front. Regular Google maps shows the same.
If I change tabs in Waze, I get:
SEARCH RESULTS TAB: Three results for Lyndhurst position, with three map pins, though one of them does not match the earlier pins. There is only one pin in the back of the lot instead of two, and there is a second at the front, near Delafield Ave. The results: 1 (ad, Dunkin, Ave, 425); 2 (Dunkin, 437, Ave); 6 (no name, no address, just shows "Lyndhurst, NJ" and a distance 1/10 mile different from others; tapping it displays the one near Delafield, and choosing EDIT in the app actually has a Waze photo, and shows a name and a DIFFERENT ADDRESS of 75 Main St, South River, NJ, pin at Thomas and Main). I really don't know what's up with that last one, there seems to be some weirded out connection between the front of lot pin not visible in WME and this other town's shop.
GOOGLE TAB: Single Lyndhurst result, bakc of lot, consistent with Google maps/GMM data.
FOURSQUARE TAB: Lots of results, none of them for Lyndhurst
YELP TAB: Don't ask
YELLOW PAGES TAB: Similar to FourSquare
What have we learned? There are lots of sources for the data, and we cant even identify some of them (which leads me to suspect ad data seeded some database but was coded incorrectly and doesn't show as ad). There is also possibly some corrupted data, and you could have been routing to the corrupted place as well. Most likely, you were routing to the address instead of the store name in some cases, and probably hitting the weird front of the lot one (that has no available source) other times. You may also have selected autocomplete, and I didn't check where that is currently sourced or targeted. Finally, as mentioned previously, if you have previously looked things up and subsequently fixed it, your phone might have old information that needs to be cleared.
Re: Lyndhurst, NJ Shopping Plaza