Google is facing one embarrassing situation after the other. Earlier this week, it was discovered that searching Google Maps with certain racial slurs would return results for the White House. Today, Google has issued an apology for the mishap, noting that it has taken action to fix the issue. Just this month, there was another map controversy which showed an Android figure urinating on Apple logo in the Google Maps.
Google has now apologised for the racist search results on Google Maps. They assured to take prompt action on the issue of maps edit monitoring. According to Google, their data and algorithm collection wasn’t able to pick up on the issue at first considering there is an endless amount of information to process. According to Google, the mixup was due to the way Google Maps populates details about locations from information around the web:
At Google, we work hard to bring people the information they are looking for, including information about the physical world through Google Maps. Our ranking systems are designed to return results that match a person’s query. For Maps, this means using content about businesses and other public places from across the web. But this week, we heard about a failure in our system—loud and clear. Certain offensive search terms were triggering unexpected maps results, typically because people had used the offensive term in online discussions of the place. This surfaced inappropriate results that users likely weren’t looking for.
Our team has been working hard to fix this issue. Building upon a key algorithmic change we developed for Google Search, we’ve started to update our ranking system to address the majority of these searches-this will gradually roll out globally and we’ll continue to refine our systems over time. Simply put, you shouldn’t see these kinds of results in Google Maps, and we’re taking steps to make sure you don’t.
Oddly enough, this is the second time in the last month that Google Maps has come under scrutiny. Toward the end of April, a user edit showed the Android mascot urinating on the Apple logo. This eventually led Google to temporarily disable user-submitted edits after it switched to a manual review process that quickly created a large backlog.
Again, we sincerely apologize for the offense this has caused, and we will do better in the future.”
Google says that it is working to fix the content flagging issue. Overtime, the improved ranking system will roll out across the globe.
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