Cleaning up a crowdsourced mess
On the Internet, everyone's an expert (opens new window). And because of that we have been cleaning up after these "experts" the last few weeks.
It started when all of a sudden the Executive and Professional Development Department (opens new window) (Execed) started getting an increase in phone calls for all kinds of things. After asking a few callers they realized everyone had found their information on Google.
Sure enough, after doing our own search, we found that Google replaced our official location with the Execed location (image below). As we investigated further, it seemed like our old location was no where to be found. This new location, which actually may have been old, was labeled "Wayne State University" and had the URL of wayne.edu. We were stumped how this could happen.
Luckily the phone number and address were still pointing to a location on campus and we could field the calls and any mail to the correct location. It would have been a nightmare if it was directing people to a non-existent location.
# Crowdsourced information
Google has a ton of information and they index a lot of it from an official source but over time that information changes, they rely on the community to alert and suggest changes. If you see something that is incorrect you can simply click the "Edit" button next to the information, fill out the correct information and it goes off for approval.
In my experience it takes about two weeks for some mystery person at Google to approve your change. We didn't have two weeks to wait and were getting hundreds of calls per day to our main number. We also quickly realized that when you call "information" on your cell phone they often use Google to get the phone number and location of what you're looking for.
Google does allow you to "claim" a location so you can make edits to it at any time. The process is a little interesting though.
# Claiming a location
At some point in time in the last few weeks Google has had each of these locations marked as our primary location:
Google used to offer a "phone" verification which is pretty quick but unfortunately that option wasn't available these last few weeks. We were forced to use the snail mail a PIN number to the location (opens new window). This can take some time... we are still waiting for the PIN's for a few locations.
# Randomly assigned locations
Each time we found incorrect information we put in a request to remove or edit it. Google would get to it and sometimes the location would just simply disappear. Then for whatever reason Google would pick up another random location as our primary, not sure why or how but the most concerning was the most recent one on Erie Street.
It concerned us the most because it isn't even a real location. The address "323 Erie Street" was a location we had in Port Huron, 60 miles away from Detroit. Google (or some Internet "expert") somehow mashed the address up with "Detroit, MI. 48201". Apparently there is an "Erie Street" in Detroit but the address number doesn't match a location (as you can see from the screenshot at the top of this post).
# Getting better
Luckily the mysterious Google employee was able to approve our community change to correct the address and phone number within a few days. At least our main mailing address and phone number are there, but the map still wasn't updated. Clicking on it still brought the user about 15 miles from our actual campus.
# Finally
Acting as a "local expert" again we were able to move the pin on the map to match the physical address that Google had for the location. I was amazed that the pin wasn't automatic to the address. But I understand that sometimes the address and pin locations need to be different.
Google must have had our ticket on the top of their list because the pin update only took the mysterious employee 24 hours to approve.
# What about our old official location?
Nobody knows. Looks like it is gone forever. Word of advice: Claim your institution's Google location now before a local expert does for you.