I’ve had changes go through, but sometimes in a monkey’s paw way.

I ask the labelling of a school on the map, specifying the name and providing the home town site as proof (a page listing all schools with their adresses and picture), and two days later it was labelled as “<Name of the town> school” completely ignoring the provided info and making the spot misleading. Requests for correction a few months apart didn’t do anything at this point.

So I can vouch for the process sometimes working, and I have nothing to do with Google. Now, why, when and how it works is a complete mystery.

> Now, why, when and how it works is a complete mystery.

Even when you're dealing with their non-public products!

Every holiday, Google reminds me I need to check the holiday hours for our business on the Google My Business page. So I do.

Every time, despite being the only authorized user on this page and despite the changes I make being nothing strange (things like being closed on christmas, and not to mention their system asked me to check it)......it sits there saying "pending review" for a week or more.

I don't really know what to think about it when they don't trust the business page's actual manager to get the info correct.

Afaik, the naming of locations is peer-reviewed automatically and by Google Maps users (they have the Local Guide program for this), but actual road changes are a different process.

Probably have to submit it to OSM and wait until Google loads their data into GMaps. /s

OSM uses a different, also incorrect, name for the road. At least the name OSM uses was correct at one point (about a decade ago - also when that feature was last edited).

At least on OSM you can change it yourself.

Indeed. I hesitate to change it manually though, as I know the (former) name of the road was done as part of a 911 upgrade in the early-mid 00's, and a lot of similarly semi-private roads renamed a few years after that. So OSM got their data from some official source a decade ago, and a number of roads throughout the locality are equally messed up by the lack of updates.

I think google don’t use OSM data.

Well and yet this is what I did and it worked, after around a year of waiting.

It is possible that whoever Google has hired for the local edits uses OSM as a reference in response to feedback received via Google Maps. Not explicitly of course, because this is strictly forbidden, both ways, due to license incompatibility. For OpenStreetMap this is a very important point, because well-meaning novice mappers copying streets or points-of-interest directly from a proprietary map put the project at risk of litigation. Google will likely have such a strong rule in their own internal documentation as well.

OSM strongly discourages the mapping of trap streets — fake streets that only exist on your map for unscrupulous competition to copy so you know that they did so — but it's possible that some mappers do put these on the map. I don't think one of the big proprietary maps has ever been caught copying one of these though.

Not trap streets but details (like small ponds in private areas) and misspellings were reportedly taken ispiration from over the years... :-)

I can confirm that Google appears to import data from OSM.

I added a placemark in OSM in the middle of Bali, Indonesia for an Internet cafe a few years ago, and it's currently also in Google Maps. (The cafe has since been closed for a few years.)

What's interesting is that's why I added it to OSM - to get picked up by Google Maps. :)

What's even more interesting is that when I told people in SV that I was doing that, they told me since it was a copyright violation, Google Maps wouldn't do that. :) :)

> "I've had a road that is mis-named near me. I've used the "suggest a change" feature multiple times, but have never gotten a response other than the automated "it'll be reviewed". Road is still mis-named."

I wonder if it would be easier to just change the street signs rather than convince Google to make the correction.

That sounds like something Douglas Adams would suggest

There is some precedent. Entire countries have had to change their name (or at least, sparked serious debate about it) because of Google:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/czech-prime-minister-wants-to-k...