AppleInsider Staff
After Apple's Maps app launched to negative reviews in 2012, the company has actively taken steps to enhance the fledgling navigation service, the latest effort being the addition of listings data from at least ten new companies.
Discovered by consulting firm Apple Maps Marketing through the recently activated Apple Maps Connect portal for small businesses, Apple now taps 13 providers for aggregating and supplying business listings data. Previously, known providers included Yelp, Factual and Neustar/Localeze.
As seen in the letter below from the Maps Connect team, Apple is currently accepting submissions only from large chains with at least 1,000 locations, what it calls "bulk submissions." All other point of interest data comes from a handful of companies.
Thank you for your recent inquiry and interest in publishing your business locations via our new Business Portal. At this time, we are only accepting bulk submissions from businesses with at least 1,000 locations. In the meantime, you may want to research the service offerings provided by the following companies that currently provide us business listing information on behalf of their clients: (in alphabetical order):
DAC Group
Factual
Location3 Media
Marquette Group
Neustar/Localeze
Placeable
PositionTech
SIM Partners
SinglePlatform
UBL
Yelp
Yext
Yodle
The letter ends with a boilerplate disclaimer that notes "information about third party services is provided for informational purposes only."
Launched last month, the Apple Maps Connect portal is a Web tool geared toward small business owners who want to be listed in the native Maps app, but might otherwise be passed over by data providers. With so-called bulk submission limitations, however, it appears Apple is not yet ready to expand the program to mom and pop shops.
Andrew Orr
Amber Neely
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
14 Comments
I don’t know if I mentioned it before, but Maps will now give you a notification in OS X when Apple commits one of the changes or additions you submit. I think that’s pretty great.
Here's hoping this will improve the POI data. I love using the Apple maps software except that train lines are not visible unless you zoom right in. And sometimes pins identify addresses blocks away from their actual location because they're presumably estimates. I actually had to cancel an appointment this week because maps directed me to a similar street address in the wrong suburb and it was too late to navigate to the correct address. It would be nice if Siri gave driving directions a little sooner too. Often the spoken command to turn comes immediately before the turn, much to late to signal properly or make a lane change.
[quote name="Dunks" url="/t/183515/apple-continues-to-enhance-maps-app-with-new-business-listings-providers#post_2642301"]Here's hoping this will improve the POI data. I love using the Apple maps software except that train lines are not visible unless you zoom right in. And sometimes pins identify addresses blocks away from their actual location because they're presumably estimates. I actually had to cancel an appointment this week because maps directed me to a similar street address in the wrong suburb and it was too late to navigate to the correct address. It would be nice if Siri gave driving directions a little sooner too. Often the spoken command to turn comes immediately before the turn, much to late to signal properly or make a lane change.[/quote] For very important meetings and places, I always use two and sometimes three sources to make sure I get the right location.
Thanks for posting about our find today. @dunks I think the intent of this deal is to speed up the cleaning of POI data as most of these companies have marketing relationships with many of the top multi-location brands in the U.S. My guess is these companies account for somewhere between 500,000-1,000,000 locations. This also is a big deal for these providers as they now have a direct pipeline into Apple Maps which could be very lucrative as brands struggle with Apple Maps' data issues.
[quote name="Tallest Skil" url="/t/183515/apple-continues-to-enhance-maps-app-with-new-business-listings-providers#post_2642253"]I don’t know if I mentioned it before, but Maps will now give you a notification in OS X when Apple commits one of the changes or additions you submit. I think that’s pretty great. [/quote] Do you have to opt in for that when you submit a change? I've submitted several corrections and haven't seen any notification option or received a notification.