[protomyth]

Because Google does a horrible job when you need a business in a rural area. It gives businesses hundreds of miles away first. The yellow pages still have its uses.

Heck, Apple and Siri are worse. Whoever did the location part of maps missed a lot.

[protomyth]

To give a simple example:

"nearest gas station" - Google gives 3 in the next town over, but skips the tribally owned one (which is $.05 cheaper) that you pass on the way to the ones listed.

Siri gives one station 10 miles away that you pass 4 stations to get to.

"nearest grocery store" - Google gets this one correct listing the two on the reservation and the closest one in the next town.

Siri skips both on the reservation and directs you to the one in the next town. You need to drive by one of the two on the reservation to get to it.

Phone book yellow pages has all of them listed.

This is the easy stuff. Asking about oil changes and tires is pretty bad.

// Siri and Weather.app on iOS is actually incapable of finding the town by zip code or name and give results "Not Found" or more bizarrely a town in New York state even though it correctly interpreted North Dakota. It also gives Fargo listings for Jamestown. Google keeps giving the college location I work at as in a town 40 miles from here.

[protomyth]

I have one more to add. I had to drive from New Rockford ND to 4 Bears Casino in New Town ND on Friday. I know how to get to New Town[1], but have never gone to the casino[2]. I search Siri for "4 Bears Casino New Town North Dakota" and get nothing. I then type its address (which I am confirming as I post) "202 Frontage Rd, New Town, ND 58763" into Maps.app. It then shows a place in Connecticut (different state and different zip code).

1) do not go through Minot no matter what the GPS says

2) a lot of meetings are held at various tribal casinos since they all have a lot of conference rooms and are convenient to the hotel that is almost always built next to the casino.

[jellicle]

Google also does a horrible job in urban areas, giving businesses a dozen miles away (~ 1 hour travel time) over businesses within a five minute walk.

[cc438]

Some of that is Google's fault but I place most of the blame on the businesses themselves.

I'd understand it if most of the local businesses that forgo an online presence were all 1-4 person, family operations where they're all too old to have a "Google it first" mindset. However the majority of businesses that refuse to register themselves with Google have no excuse. I can search for the closest laundromat, tire shop, florist, etc directly by name and address and the only results will be those sites that scrape the secretary of state's corporate filings.

Google has made the process of creating an online presence the simplest, most painless process imaginable. Google's My Business service gets you on Maps with all the important info (location, hours, services, etc) for free, yet so few businesses take the importance of being a top, location based result. If a business doesn't come up in my location based search it's as good as if it never existed.

[itsybitsycoder]

Why is this the business's responsibility? Like, I understand why they might want to do this, because it will increase traffic, but we're talking about its usefulness as a service to potential customers. If I started a service like this and the data sucked, wouldn't that be my fault even if I had an easy registration process for businesses?

[dogma1138]

Didn't google use street view data to register allot of businesses?

On the anecdotal evidence side there are 3 laundromats within about 2 min walk from my house, 2 are on a high street and can be found in Google, one is a part of a chain but the other is owned by a Persian guy who's way into his 60's (which still owns a flip phone, and i don't think he knows how to register with Google), 1 is in a mews (like an alley for you yanks) and it's not listed, the coffee shop in the same mews isn't listed either even tho every coffee shop on the high street is. If you open streetview you can walk through the high street but you can't get into the mews.