Google Maps Renames The Essex Village Danbury To Banbury

How to contact Google to fix a broken map

Banbury EssexGoogle Maps, possibly the most popular online road atlas and map software today, has somehow renamed the Essex village of Danbury (a few miles east of the City of Chelmsford) to Banbury, a small town in Warwickshire. In the screenshot to the left you can see “Banbury” clearly marked on the A414 just to the east of The Griffin and St. John The Baptist church, which sit at the highest points on Danbury Hill.

How To Contact Google

How to contact Google to fix a broken map
Report Problems To Google

The good thing about Google Maps is that you can easily contact Google. Each page as a “report a problem” link on the bottom right and this allows you to inform Google about problems. We reported a problem in Chelmsford in April this year when the western end of Springfield Road was labelled High Street. The map was corrected within a few days and we received a message to thank us and to confirm it was fixed.

Your Google Maps problem report has been reviewed, and you were right!” Google, April 2012.

So Google do take note of any reports and investigate and correct them.

Community Input Means Free Services

Like many of Google’s products and services it relies heavily on people helping and collaborating to fix minor problems, rather than employing hundreds of thousands of people to constantly run quality checks. It is actually good for users as it means that most services remain free.

People have been more bemused than confused though as post code searches still bring up the correct location. This is a minor mistake really, but certainly not something that you expect to see on a very popular map. It certainly would not happen on an Ordnance Survey map!

Apparently the Banbury error has already been reported so there is no need to inform Google again.

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