[This is one of a series of articles originally published on Local Guides Connect]

Photo by Joey Csunyo on Unsplash

On Google maps, the placement of most pins, that indicate where exactly a point of interest (POI) is located, is correct. But there is also a considerable amount of pins which are not placed at best possible location. This can be:
* just a little off (in the middle of the road instead of on the building)
* somewhere more or less near to the POI (a bit further down the street, or at an intersection nearby – this is often the case when no house number was entered, or when the house numbers are quite different on either side of the road, e.g. when house number 100 is across house number 77, with 101 being further down the road)
* completely wrong (can be because a business has moved and the pin location was not adapted, or because a common street name, say Main Street, was used with a wrong ZIP code)

As you might imagine correcting the first type is quite easy, the last one quite hard – the ‘worst case’ I’ve seen myself was over 100 km off.

The best approach (when working in the mobile version) is to open Google maps in satellite view and zoom in until pins start popping up. If you notice a pin that seems to be oddly placed (e.g. in the middle of the street) click it to select the point of interest. A small white box with the name of the POI will appear at the bottom of your screen. If Street View is available for that area, you will get a preview of Street View just above the POI name: click this preview to open Street View in full screen mode. This allows you to explore the area and check if the POI is actually there and move up and down the street if needed. To place the pin in the correct location, however, you will need to return to the satellite view. So make sure that you pay very close attention to the Street View images, especially if the POI is in the middle of a bunch of houses that all look very similar. Useful indications can be:
* the shape and color of the roofs
* the placement of one building compared to another (some are closer to the street than others)
* roadmarks
* trees
As already mentioned in previous posts: remember that Street View images can be outdated, so addtional information either from other pictures that were uploaded on Google maps or that you might find on the website can help to get the correct and up to date information.
Then close the Street View to go back to satellite view, click the POI name and click Suggest an edit. In the edit screen, click the map preview to open the full screen map, zoom in as much as possible (to make 100% sure you can select the best possible location) and then click the correct location to move the pin there (in the desktop version you have to actually drag the pin to the correct location – which can be quite a challenge if you have to move it relatively far). You will then be asked if the address also needs to be changed or not. In my experience this is not needed in most cases.

The original article can be found here

Disclaimer: the practices described here as best practice are my personal interpretation, and I don’t claim any level of official endorsement.