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My wife and I are both having this occur frequently, with the primary issue it brings up being that we often find ourselves getting directions to our desired location or searches for things nearby oriented in Mascoutah, IL when we are in fact about 45 miles away from there.

I have an LG G3 running Android 5.0 and she has an LG G4 running Android 5.0.

I'd like to figure out how to make this stop occurring, or at least occur significantly less. I would have blamed WiFi locations, but I'm including a few screenshots of three different days of mine that show it is very unlikely I'm hitting a WiFi consistently with that location.

Route 1 to work.

Route 2 to work.

Stayed within 10 min of home.

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    Welcome to the Android Enthusiasts! Agreed: the first two maps definitely rule out the "moved neighbor effect". I can imagine one router moved. I could even imagine two routers using the same SSID. But that would be a few to many routers sharing the same SSID and MAC, definitely! +1 for the good documentation. Curiously looking forward to explanations – as this one leaves me speechless (unless someone from Mascoutah is watching you with a flying WiFi drone)! Good luck!
    – Izzy ♦
    Jul 21, 2015 at 20:13
  • Btw, what was intended as a joke might give us a clue: Do you have WiFi enabled when that happens? If so, (yes, switching it off might cure it) you could check for "WiFi networks in reach" and see if you can see their SSID. Having that, sites like OpenBmap allow you to search for it (umm, St Louis area not covered there – Mozilla has it, if you can find a search for that).
    – Izzy ♦
    Jul 21, 2015 at 20:24
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    You know, a WiFi drone would almost make me feel better, at least I'd have an explanation... I do almost always keep WiFi on because of how Google Maps yells at me about it - even if I'm definitely not getting WiFi. I'll try leaving it off for the ride home today and then see if any trips to Mascoutah still occur.
    – James
    Jul 21, 2015 at 21:07
  • For what it's worth you aren't the only one. It shows that I been to Chicago recently, but in fact. I haven't been to Chicago in months. Other than that everything else is correct. No idea why. Just figured I would let ya know, it happens to me as well. Lol
    – jer3my
    Jul 21, 2015 at 23:25
  • So, I made the trip home with WiFi off and still show as being in Mascoutah for about 22 minutes on the way home. Is it possible I've got a whole bunch of cell towers in my area with incorrect locations? That seems unlikely though. Is there some sort of inherent, recurring math issue with the GPS calculation in both of my LG devices? (Just throwing theories up in the air at this point.)
    – James
    Jul 22, 2015 at 13:39

1 Answer 1

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When this occurs, send feedback to Google from Google Maps, with your location enabled.

  1. Open Google Maps.
  2. Touch the menu (three lines).
  3. Touch 'Send feedback'.
  4. Touch 'Report location issues'.

This is what Google requests that you do.

More background:

The Washington Post reports that location as reported by your cellular provider can be inaccurate. This story includes a successful resolution for one person from Sprint, but a continuing battle for another person. Part of the trouble is that no one owns this problem. Reporting it to Google is a start, but may not actually solve your problem.

It could also be a WiFi problem. Using alternate firmware like DD-WRT often resets the MAC and SSID to a common default; so it is definitely possible that there are access points at multiple, widely spaced locations that map to the same place.

If you have the location accuracy of the bad location, this may also be hint as to the error source. WiFi will generally report errors in the 10s of meters, while cellular is generally in 100s of meters.

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