Do you remember what parents used to say when kids stared at the television for too long? “Don’t do that, you’ll get square eyes.” What they actually meant was: if you stare at the same screen for too long, you lose sight of reality. The illusion on the screen becomes the truth.
In the world of Location Intelligence, I see many organizations and algorithms suffering from exactly this on a daily basis. They have developed ‘square eyes’. They stare blindly at outdated datasets. The system says A, so the truth must be A. They are literally navigating using a map that no longer matches the territory. The world keeps turning, roads change, and opening hours fluctuate, but they continue to base their course on incomplete data.
And that has severe consequences.
The moral question for your organization
How often does your customer, your prospect, or in the case of municipalities: your resident, stare with square eyes at your location data?
Try not to think about it. Try not to think about that time your navigation sent you the wrong way. That time you blindly followed route advice and got your car completely stuck in a closed street. Or try not to think about that time you biked through the pouring rain to a store or a municipal desk because the online map said they were open. Only to end up in front of a dark, closed door.
That extreme frustration? That is exactly what happens when organizations don’t have their Google Places Data in order. Incorrect opening hours. A pin placed 200 meters away in a field instead of at the entrance. An address change that hasn’t been processed. As a consumer, you simply cannot make good decisions if the information isn’t complete and fresh. And yet, millions of decisions are made every day while navigating. There is a blind trust in platforms like Google Maps.
The illusion becomes reality (Welcome to the GEO era)
For you as an entrepreneur, alderman, or marketer, a wrong pin on the map might just be ‘a detail’. A minor administrative error. But for the end-user—or for AI models like ChatGPT and Gemini that rely on this data—it is the absolute truth.
Is your data listed incorrectly online? Then that is the reality in their minds. What does that customer do when faced with a closed door? They turn around, navigate to the competitor, and never come back. That is not a ‘missed lead’. That is business loss of contact.
Especially now that we are shifting from SEO to GEO (Generative Engine Optimization), where AI provides direct answers based on location data, faulty data is a direct risk to your business continuity. If an algorithm has to make assumptions about your business, you lose control.
Claim your factual truth
At Localyse, we do nothing all day but help companies, governments, and retailers claim their factual truth on the largest maps in the world. We cure the ‘square eyes’.
With our Improve Maps services and smart Google Maps APIs, we ensure that your location data is accurate in real-time, enriched, and perfectly integrated with your own systems.
- So your customers no longer get lost.
- So you don’t fall victim to assumptions made by an AI algorithm.
- So the pin on the map finally matches reality again.
Is your prospect or resident still making decisions based on an illusion? Don’t leave the truth about your locations to assumptions. Take back control.
Shall we take a look at how your data really stands? Talk to our Location Experts.
