Wednesday, December 03, 2008

Google Maps Off On Argonne As Well!

This is getting way too hysterical.

I mentioned last time that Google Maps had pointed to the wrong location when one types "Fermilab" in the search box. That appears to have been corrected now.

So just out of curiosity, I tried other national labs. All my searches use the full name, i.e. Brookhaven National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, etc.

Brookhaven and Los Alamos came out accurately.

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory pointed to me, at least initially, some place way wrong, and then when I shortened it to "Berkeley National Laboratory", it got it right. The same with Lawrence Livermore. I had to simply enter "Livermore National Laboratory".

But the funniest part is when I tried doing a search on "Argonne National Laboratory". If you think Google Maps was off by 15 miles for Fermilab, try getting it wrong by a whole state! "Argonne National Laboratory", according to Google Maps, is somewhere in the middle of the state of Wisconsin!

Go ahead and try it. :)

I think I have way too much time on my hands..... :)

Zz.

2 comments:

Tometheus said...

It's that whole "Near xxxx" thing that is throwing it off. The default search result comes back with "National Laboratory near Argonne, Wisconsin". However, if you had just searched for say, 60559 (i.e. Westmont), then did the search for Argonne National Laboratory, it would find the correct place. Apparently, it tries to find a recognizable city name first, i.e. Argonne (WI) then searches for the rest near there. A "correct" search might have been "Argonne National Laboratory Chicago" or something like that. Google goofed on that one.

That, and ANL's just not that recognizable to the rest of the world. Suuuuure, mention Fermilab, and everyone has heard about it, but mention "Argonne" and they ask you "Oh? You live near Portland?". (BTW: Haven't people heard of any other cities in Oregon?)

(Someone needs to do a comic for the lab. Although it's probably end up being mostly strips about sibling rivalries with the more popular younger brother. And white deer. Can't forget the deer. Alas, it would have to be rogue and published off-site, since "sense of humor" doesn't seem to be in line with the current environment. Someone would complain if a strip was anywhere near satirical and we just couldn't have that, could we?)

(Sorry... just went through a few ESH courses today, which have tinged my mood. I love my job, really :D )

ZapperZ said...

But if you do a straight-forward Google search on "Argonne National Laboratory", the search engine comes up with the exact Argonne webpage. No problem there.

It is obvious that the search engine for the Maps is different, and it obviously has different criteria in figuring out the hits, etc. to figure out the top relevant results. I just found it amusing that the lab doesn't even come up anywhere on the top of the list of locations. One would think that including the "national laboratory" would have created some sort of a clue on what is being search for.

Zz.