Apple is now crowdsourcing business listings to help make better cards

Apple is now crowdsourcing business listings to help make better cards ,

for years you have been able to provide incorrect information or otherwise lack of maps of Apple listings. The company also used the so-called personal "ground truth", people whose job is to check the company's data. Now, Apple put some of this work in the hands of companies that wish to obtain information about specific locations in the Maps application. Today, the company quietly launched Apple Maps Connect, a tool designed for business owners to both verify and present new information on their location, which is purged with a phone call and PIN to company "phone number.

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In addition to the usual things such as address, phone number and location, companies have the ability to add things like an official site, Yelp and Facebook page Twitter handle. Apple has already aggregates and displays some of these things on lists of companies, but it could be a useful tool if several stores of a chain have accounts or specific social media websites. Although Search Engine Land who spotted the new page, notes that it is currently difficult to use for companies with many locations, or data agencies that do this kind of maintenance work a large scale.

Nobody wants to drive to a store closed taco

Apple grabbed many Flack When the cards came out two years ago because of inaccurate lists, 3D imaging wobbly, and routes that have managed to leave people stranded. The company has taken steps to improve it and extend it to Mac users, but is far from being as transparent about its progress as Google rival. It is also always criticized for some of its local business listings in some foreign country and do not provide public transit directions. In an interview with Charlie Rose last month, Apple CEO Tim Cook said the company was still investing in the service, but it did not provide specific details on what the business was up.

Crowdsourcing map data has become standard practice, and something companies - including Apple - do to find real-time traffic data. It is also one of the major reasons Google bought Waze last year, as the data of its 50 million users would improve the accuracy of Google Maps as well. For its part, Apple has data for cards from a number of sources, including TomTom, DigitalGlobe, Waze, and the US government.