
How Google Maps Leads Women Seeking Abortions Astray - johnny313
https://gizmodo.com/how-google-maps-leads-women-seeking-abortions-astray-1822882758
======
dragonwriter
That's not a Google Maps problem, that's a problem with the deliberately
misleading marketing of crisis pregnancy centers, which has been going on
since before the Web existed; no one blamed that problem on the Yellow Pages,
and it makes as little sense to blame it on Google Maps.

------
alehul
It's an interesting and fairly unique problem as highlighted by this part of
the article:

> there is no advantage to a steakhouse trying to convince someone looking
> specifically for vegetarian food to come eat at their restaurant—all you
> would get are bad reviews and lower sales numbers.

It's possible that Google could bring up a custom UI for that query, as they
do with many other search queries, but it could also be an uncomfortably
political statement for such a large company.

Perhaps the solution lies in a private website designed to weed out those
'crisis pregnancy center' results and centralize abortion center locations?
With enough traffic, it would rise to the top of search results.

~~~
Eridrus
I don't think this is a political issue - Google should be aligned with what
users want in their non-ad results and these places are clearly trying to
decieve users and game the results.

I think Google should make it clear that this is a results quality issue and
not a political issue and that they want users to be able to find what they
are searching for regardless of whether it is a gun show or an abortion.

~~~
alehul
You're right, and the results should definitely be better.

I suppose I was imagining a system where they actually built something
uniquely different, similar to when you search for a product or a celebrity's
birthday and it displays it at the top. Devoting special attention in that way
could be quite political.

If they were to just algorithmically improve search results that are displayed
and weed out CPCs without it showing on the front-end, then that's a great
idea.

I don't know why I was thinking of anything else at first!

------
unsignedint
Many religions' attitude toward these topics (abortion, LGBTQ, etc.) are why I
have problem with religions to the point that makes me very angry.

Religion should be something you should practice to determine YOUR own
choices, not for OTHER people.

~~~
SamReidHughes
That would make sense if there wasn't obviously disagreement about what counts
as people.

