MapMyPage: Great Idea, Poor Execution

by Matt on Sep 15, 2008 in Content

Adding a map to your hyperlocal blog posts can be a great way to add extra information and context for readers. A few weeks ago, I wrote about 8 WordPress plugins that add mapping capabilities for those of us who use WordPress.

There’s a new service that brings mapping to a hyperlocal blog regardless of the platform; it’s called MapMyPage. It’s a beta product, so we know it’s still in development. I recently tested it out on our Richland Real Estate Blog. Here’s how it works, in the form of a Pros/Cons review.

MapMyPage: Pros

Installation: Installing MapMyPage is brain-dead simple, especially compared to some of the plug-ins I wrote about earlier. It’s as easy as placing a 3-4 line code snippet in the HEAD section of your blog template. If you can cut-and-paste, you can install MapMyPage.

Generally unintrusive: You’ll see some screenshots below, and I’m not sure you’ll agree with me on this. I think the implementation is mostly unintrusive. MapMyPage places a small globe into your post anywhere it recognizes a location. As the web site explains, it doesn’t underline the location or even add a globe to a location that’s linked, because it doesn’t want to interfere with the styling of your blog.

Here’s the original blog post about the upcoming Richland City Fair (link opens in a new window so you can get back easily), and here’s a screenshot of how it looked with MapMyPage installed:

screenshot #1

Unfortunately, from the testing I did, that’s about where the Pros end. Let’s look at the problems I found.

MapMyPage: Cons

In the screenshot above, you see that the phrase “Richland City Hall” has a globe next to it — the tool recognized that as a specific location that can be mapped. But have a look at what happens when you click on the globe and the map pops-up above the blog post:

screenshot #2

It points toward the city of Richland, Mississippi; I’m blogging about Richland, Washington. The two other Richland references in the blog post were also mapped to Mississippi. That alone is a deal-breaker for any hyperlocal blogger; you obviously can’t use a mapping tool that maps to the wrong location.

I gave it another try on a blog post (opens in new window) where specific addresses are mentioned. Here’s how it looked:

screenshot #3

I marked three problems in the screenshot above:

  1. “Riverton” may be a city name somewhere, but in this case, it’s the name of a facility. There’s nothing I can do to remove that globe.
  2. It didn’t recognize the street addresses in the last bullet item about a new pizza restaurant.
  3. It did add a globe inside the reference to 1800 Bellerive Drive, which I thought was a step in the right direction … until I clicked the link and saw that, instead of recognizing the street address, it recognized Bellerive as a city in France. See below…
screenshot #4

The MapMyPage web site shows a couple examples of exact addresses being correctly mapped, but in both cases the addresses include the full city, state, and zip code. That may be what’s needed for MapMyPage to get the geo-targeting right; but, there’s no way I’m going to start adding “Richland, WA, 99352″ to every street address I mention; it’s too awkward and redundant on a Richland blog.

Final Thoughts

I’m glad to see new tools and services that can make hyperlocal blogging an easier and more enjoyable thing for bloggers and readers. MapMyPage is a great idea, but comes up far short on execution. In my brief install, there were too many mapping mistakes to accept.

MapMyPage is still in “beta”, and hopefully will continue to develop and improve its geo-targeting before its actual launch. Some extra control for “power users” would be helpful, too — perhaps a way to preview and edit/remove the globes it places in my post before I publish.

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September 15, 2008 | Filed Under Content 

Comments

4 Responses to “MapMyPage: Great Idea, Poor Execution”

  1. MiriamEllis on September 16th, 2008 5:05 pm

    Looks like the MapMyPage folks had better read this post of yours, Matt. Sending folks to Mississippi may result in better housing prices…but, it’s not quite what we’re looking for.

    Thanks for reviewing this service.
    Miriam

  2. Blogging Week in Review | Matt McGee on September 19th, 2008 9:29 pm

    [...] MapMyPage: Great Idea, Poor Execution [...]

  3. Brandon Bruce on September 21st, 2008 5:42 am

    Matt,

    Thank you for your thorough review. We’ve increased the threshold confidence level in the MapMyPage code to reduce the number of false positives you noted in your post.

    Thanks,

    Brandon

  4. Colorado Springs Real Estate by Kathy Torline on October 2nd, 2008 8:04 am

    Great information about mapping services, I’ll have to check some of them out. FYI: I just listened your podcast with Justin, good info!

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