Finally, Apple Is Doing Something to Improve the Accuracy of Apple Maps

According to the French Blog iGeneration, Apple Maps is hoping to get itself back on the map. How? By taking a page out of Google Maps' book and hiring freelancers from TryRating to manually check the accuracy of their locations.

Apple Maps has been somewhat of a joke, known for its inferiority to Google Maps due to location inaccuracy, bugs, and incorrect data. However, recent efforts, like this one and their recent expedition to expand the cities they collect street data from show that Apple is doing its best to get Apple Maps to beat, or at least match, their competitors at long last.

For reportedly 54 cents per average task — each which only takes a few minutes — Apple has users verify the accuracy of certain places, namely when a user searches for a specific place nearby. The program would ask the freelancer to check and make sure the places listed are actually within the distances they claim they are and make sure that the addresses are accurate.

Phoenix, Arizona's city grid.

Despite how quick the evaluations may be, Apple is definitely making sure they are thorough and accurate to improve bugs. Supposedly, Apple has a 200-page "Maps Search Evaluation Guidelines" document that freelancers are required to follow during their tasks to make sure that they are successful and precise.

The ease of reporting a problem in maps likely caused an overwhelming amount of issues to fix at Apple Maps, causing them to out-source the issues with freelance tasks. Hopefully, with Apple Maps listening to the concerns of their customers, and enlisting manual help for these tasks, they will be able to finally break free of their negative reputation and re-establish themselves as a legitimate mapping service.

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Cover photo by Kārlis Dambrāns/Flickr