This week, Google added personalization to help you find your "favorite locations faster." The issue is, it slows you down in finding your most favorite location - your home!
A Google Maps Help thread has complaints from people who have saved locations labeled as "home." Whenever they wanted directions, they typed in "home" or "my home" and bingo, it came up. Now it does not and it requires them to enter in their address, which in turn, slows them down.
The searcher said:
It appears the Google Maps team has replaced the "saved locations" feature with the "personalized search results". The problem is, when I created my "saved locations" I included some additional information in the names of those entries so they could be easily found by personal names. For instance, if my friend Steve lived at a particular address, I'd save his address into "saved locations" and include the name "Steve" or "Steve's home". Then, I was able to start typing "Steve" and it would automatically bring up this saved location.This is no longer the case. His address is still flagged in my web history and it autocompletes if I start typing in his address... but I can no longer start typing "Steve" to bring up his location.
Any chance we can still get to our "saved locations" data to at least backup the data before you nuke it all for good?
The thread seems to be heating up with angry Google Maps users. The thing is, Google is listening, so it will be interesting to see what changes, if any, they make based on this feedback. Google Maps Linda said:
This is great feedback guys. I'll be sure to share this with the team. I don't have an answer right now, but hopefully I will be able to share more later.
Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.
