Here’s a good one … A small village in the north of England, Argleton, has been causing confusion with an air of mystery. The simple reason is, is that the village simply doesn’t exist except in the world of Google.
The town appears on Google Maps in the middle of fields close to the M58 motorway, just south of Ormskirk.
The image above is from Bing Maps, displaying the exact same area but without any reference to Argleton in the map.
As far as our eyes could see, there are just fields in that area. Certainly no buildings, let alone a whole village.
One theory about is this is that Argleton may have been deliberately added, as a trap to catch companies that violate the map’s copyright. However, this was denied by the cartographers, Tele Atlas, who claimed they provided accurate information and Google denied that they have altered it in any way.
The interesting part of this episode is that with this ‘presence’, online businesses that uses the map data have detected it and automatically treated it as a real town in that specific postcode area. An internet search for the town now brings up a series of home, job and dating listings for people and places “in Argleton”, as well as websites which help people find its nearest chiropractor and even plan jogging or hiking routes through it. The businesses, people and services listed are real, but are actually based elsewhere in the same postcode area. Which brings to the point – regardless of whether the town is fictitious or real, as soon as it is detected, online businesses will use it. So, be very careful what we publishes online…