Google Maps Australia Turns 30 Second Walk Into 18 Minutes Drive

Send for the search party, Google gives a bum steer from the Sydney Morning Herald reports how the just launched service Google Australia Maps was dinged after someone discovered it turned a 30 second walk into a 18 minute car journey.

In particular, this search for directions from Shelbourne Hotel at 200 Sussex Street to Google’s own Sydney office at 201 Sussex Street — across the street — takes you over a toll bridge and back, an 18 minutes car drive.

In the screen capture below, the two pins show the start and end point. Notice how the route goes well away from them:

Google Maps Australia 18 minutes

Too funny!

In any event, the article places the blame on MapData Sciences, a Sydney-based company that powers directions for Google Maps Australia.

The statement from Google? “Google Maps Australia is currently a beta product and we welcome feedback as we continue to enhance the product for users in Australia.”

I wonder when this will get fixed. They fixed the 200 U-Turn bug found last month fairly quickly, when that was reported.

Related Topics: Channel: Local | Google: Maps & Local | Google: Outside US


About The Author: is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here. For more background information on Barry, see his full bio over here.

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  • http://blog.outer-court.com Philipp Lenssen

    These are hilarious!

  • http://www.rationalistic.com Tal Rotbart

    It is funny that they are blaming it on MapData Sciences, since they provide the data to Live Search as well which apparently does just fine with the same search: http://tinyurl.com/3xrknv

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