Screenwerk

Registered Google users are now permitted to adjust address and location information for businesses on Google Maps (move the place marker), and soon will have the ability to more broadly edit local business information. Changes will initially go through a human editorial process to ensure the accuracy and propriety of information as the new capabilities are rolled out. Google told us that business owners will have final authority over their listings.

The move is consistent with increasing “socialization” or openness of Google and part of a broader effort to obtain fresher and better local data. Allowing the community and business owners to edit and update information is the only viable way to have an accurate database. As diligent as the various providers are in updating and correcting local listings, the commercial databases are full of inaccurate and outdated information.

For these reasons, Yahoo has had a similar system in place since January, 2007.

The rest of this post is at SEL.

Here’s a video explaining the new feature:

This entry was posted on November 19, 2007 at 2:41 pm and is filed under Mapping, User-generated content. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.