Google’s adding maps of the USA to UK results
Update: Also see my follow up post on US / UK map issues.
There have been complaints about irrelevant US examples filling up the results in Google UK.
Now Google's started adding maps of the USA to UK-based companies in its results. Here are two examples - both .com domains three examples (affecting .com and .co.uks).
I think Matt Cutts completely missed the point in his video explaining .com sites and UK results. (And apologies to Dave Naylor whose post about this I actually commented on 2 months ago but completely forgot I'd seen!)
Kent is not in New Jersey
Search Google for Downham tackle and you get this result half way down the page (via Richard Vaughan). It's a UK-based directory of bait shops in Kent, with a map of Piscataway in New Jersey next to it.
Downham tackle: Kent, not New Jersey
Somerset is not in Maine
Search Google for Air Control Industries and aircontrolindustries.com comes first. It's a Somerset-based company - but Google has included a link to a map of Windsor in Maine, USA. (via Thomas Hallett)
Air Control industries: Somerset, not Maine
Pennsylvania is not near Birmingham
Search Google for 'cottage hire birmingham' the first result - a UK-based directory of Midlands villas - includes a map of Bethlehem Pennsylvania next to it. It's not clear what this has to do with 'cottage hire birmingham' (link to original post).
Cottage hire Birmingham
All a bit odd. And rubbish.
Apparently the way to solve this issue is to leave a discussion on the Google Maps help forums and hope that someone from Google sees it and manually resolves it. I've heard of these issues being resolved in that way in the past. There's no option to report the issue any other way in Google Maps as far as I can tell.
Gah tell me about it. I'm from North Wales, turns out that there is not only a North Wales in Pennsylvania, but also they name all their towns after us (Bala, Haraford & Montgomery, USA are all small towns that have local business listings on Google UK)
Cheers for the mention Malcolm. I've seen even more of these issues in the last few days but haven't had the forsight to screenshot most of them. The random US maps seem to be prevalent in local search stuff more than anything, as far as I can tell.
There was a similar post on David Naylor's blog a few months ago- http://www.davidnaylor.co.uk/google-maps-wrong-again.html
It's not a new issue!
Oh yes. I actually commented on that as well - I must have a memory like a sieve.
If it's not new, it's at least timely as Matt Cutts published that video yesterday saying the UK results are fine. They clearly aren't.
I'm a Yank from Washington state who was fortunate enough to study abroad in the UK this summer. I noticed the same thing while living over there...was trying to find my way around, and had US places come up on the UK version of Google while I was living over there. It's like a bit of the US had followed me! It wasn't very helpful for finding my way around in London! (But the "tubeplanner" site is absolute gold! =) London has the best public transit system EVer!) Can't wait to go back someday. Brits are the salt of the earth. Hope they fix your Google!
[...] See examples of the previous problems - where irrelevant sites from non-UK countries were turning up for searches that were clearly looking for local information - in this blog post and this one. These issues followed earlier problems with US maps showing up for UK sites (see here and here). [...]