How a man tricked Google Maps into naming a road after him

Although Google Maps is generally a valuable source of information, sometimes issues can be missed by busy moderators. Case in point: when a man in Beijing fooled everyone from government officials to navigation apps and got his name listed as a street. In 2013, Ge Yulu, a Beijing-based artist, discovered a street in Chaoyang District lacking a street sign due to confusion during rezoning. So he came up with the idea of ​​putting up a sign naming the street Ge Yu Lu, which made sense to locals since “Lu” – part of his name – also doubles as the word for “road” in Chinese.

The guerrilla art was so effective that by 2015 the new name appeared in official records and, soon after, in all relevant map applications, including Google Maps. Finally, the panel and map lists were corrected. This prank may not be as crazy as when Spanish police found evidence in a murder case on Google Maps, but, regardless, Ge Yulu was able to experience what many aspiring artists can only dream of: having a street named after them, even if it was just for a moment. Although it is impossible to state an exact reason why all map applications failed to detect the incorrect street name, it appears that there are several ways to add or rename items on a map application.

Much like the Lake Ontario and Lake America drama, which resulted in a new navigation app dethroning Google Maps, governments have the ability to change the name. Interestingly, though, it’s also very easy for users to contribute to maps by tapping or clicking the plus icon at the bottom of the page. From there, you can edit incorrect road names or even add and draw a road that Google may have missed. Of course, the criteria for posting self-edits is generally strict, and Google uses human moderators and machine learning algorithms to weed out content that is incorrect or outright false.

In this case, however, Ge Yulu’s trick was first recorded by Baidu (Google’s Chinese counterpart), which uses machines and humans to verify street name information. Since the street sign looked official, it was probably very difficult to detect the error. And once the street name was recorded by Baidu Maps, it was eventually integrated into other mapping apps, including Apple Maps, Google Maps, and AutoNavi. In 2017, signs for Ge Yu Lu were removed, but the Beijing street name mistake might be one of the most interesting footnotes in Google Maps history, including the time a user accidentally discovered a meteor crater.