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Post by jhandl
Thanks Andy,

Yes I read the FAQ and searched the forum before I posted. That particular issue you linked is not related to the problem I'm reporting. It's not that the location is shown in the wrong place in the map. It's that the search results show wrong addresses, including the right street but the wrong street number. Not in the map, but in the search results list. Text only. I search for "1234 streetX" and get results like "2376 streetX". This would be ok if it was a search engine for particular addresses, like a list of gas station addresses. But this is for searching a map. The address I entered exists, it's on the map, and streetX goes from 1000 to 3000. Address 1234 should not be expected to be individually specified in the database the search function is using. Otherwise EVERY individual address would need to be in that database, which is very obviously absurd.

</rant>
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Post by jhandl
Andy, for some reason you seem to have missed when I posted "I just tried searching in Bing, and it found the address without a problem. As did Google Maps."

There is clearly a serious problem with the way Waze searches for addresses. From what I can see, it's searching for the exact address in some database of exact addresses, instead of looking the address up in a GIS database where each street has a range of valid numbers. If that is the case, somebody at Waze needs to be fired.

If the only way I can enter an address is to point it on the map, and the notifications (the most innovative feature in Waze) aren't filtered to what happens on my route to make them relevant, then I see no point in using Waze.

It's a nice idea with a very bad implementation. I hope somebody else picks it up and makes it work.
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Post by jhandl
You are right, it was harsh, and I have to correct myself and apologize.

I did further tests and it seems that Waze is not searching on a database of specific addresses. I searched for an address that I know doesn't exist but is a possible address given the range of valid house numbers on a given street (for example, there's a house on "1234 StreetX" but not on "1235 StreetX"). All map systems I tested (Google, Yahoo, Bing, Waze) were able to locate the fake address, although while most went straight to the correct location on the map, only Waze shows text results where the correct address is not among the first results. This is probably due to messy data in which case presenting the search results in text form before jumping to the map is a sensible decision.

So the problem is in the data. Most of the addresses I search for don't show up in the search results or show up at the bottom of the list. Most of the search results are clearly garbage, like an empty title with a wrong address (wrong number or just the street name, no number, which makes no sense). Clearly the data needs to be cleaned up. I'll look into map editing to see if I can help in that effort.
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Post by jhandl
@daknife, I hadn't noticed those icons, the iPad app hides them. Thanks for bringing that to my attention!

The strange thing is that selecting Google or Bing gets me "No results found" for every address I tried, and I know Google and Bing can find those addresses without a problem through their web apps.

Also, the default search engine is Waze here. Not sure why it should be different depending on location, as both Bing and Google should work all over the world, and in any case Waze's own would certainly be worse for locations outside of the US, not better (except that in this case, because of the bug I mentioned above, Bing and Google don't work, so Waze is, in a way, "better").
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Post by jhandl
Thanks, I reported the bug.
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Post by mssusa
In Saudi Arabia only Google can find addresses online. Bing can't. Apparently, Waze doesn't have an agreement with Google to search addresses. So, inside Waze client you will not be able to find any addresses using any of the tabs (Waze, 4Square, Google, Bing). Waze tries instead to match the street name and you'll find results,if any, in the Waze tab.

This may be be the case in Argentina, too. Our only hope is for Waze to sign an agreement with a provider (Google or Saudi Post in my case). Waiting for Waze to use address data from WME is not an option. Who'll enter all address data? What about countries with non sequential addressing?

BTW, be nice to us tomorrow. 5/0 like Spain is enough. Please don't make a lesson of us :|

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Post by OldGnome
jhandl wrote:If that is the case, somebody at Waze needs to be fired.
I think that's a bit harsh.
jhandl wrote:It's a nice idea with a very bad implementation.
Ditto

What you seek works for me. Every time. Then again, I am navigating on the USA, not Argentina. There could be a country-specific issue. Have you checked the Argentina forum?
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