Many iPhone users still consider Apple Maps to be inferior to Google Maps which is why Apple have now enlisted the help of contracted freelancers to help validate the accuracy of information. Freelancers will work in exchange for micropayments, according to the French blog iGeneration.
The report claims that Apple, for the past year, have been paying freelancers 54 cents per task through a platform called TryRating. Each task only takes roughly a few minutes to complete but the fine print limits each freelancer to 600 completed tasks and no more than 20 hours of work per week. There is no information about how freelancers are selected but it appears that they are recruited through a third party organization.
One typical task, for example, may be that a freelancer must verify the accuracy and relevance of the search results that Apple shows for a McDonald’s query in a particular location. The task of the freelancer would be to ensure that the McDonald’s restaurants listed have accurate addresses.
Freelancers are supposed to follow a 200 page Maps Search Evaluation Guidelines document and one of the examples that Apple provides is a search from Somerville, Massachusetts for “Machu Picchu”, both a well-known historical site in Peru and the name of a restaurant in the city. A freelancer would be required to check that the search results for Machu Picchu are contextually relevant.
Apple Maps launched back in 2012 and was criticized for having incomplete and inaccurate mapping data which led some iPhone users along dangerous routes. The app still continues to get a bad rep among users but the company are hoping that their continuing efforts will soon smooth out problems and reverse some of these opinions.
