Online search can now handle typos
You have an address, a phone keyboard, and one extra letter. A search for Zlotaa 59 should still give you a chance to find Złote Tarasy at Złota 59 in Warsaw.
Our online search now handles small typing mistakes. When ordinary search does not find a strong match, it checks similar spellings in the map data and looks for places that fit the rest of your query.
A little room for mistakes
Search can recover a missing letter, an extra letter, a substituted letter, or two neighboring letters typed in the wrong order. Here are examples we checked with the map centered near each destination:
| What you type | What full search finds |
|---|---|
Zlotaa 59 | Złote Tarasy, Złota 59, Warszawa |
cafex de flore | Café de Flore, Paris |
Мнск | Мінск (Minsk) |
Names without accents work too: cafe de flore finds Café de Flore. Missing an accent does not use up the typo allowance, so cafex can still match café. The same goes for letters like ł: Zlotaa 59 works with an ordinary l in place of ł and an extra a.
The correction is deliberately small: one mistake in one word. House numbers stay as you entered them, and the other words still have to match. A nearby place with a good match to your original query keeps its priority.
Corrections in suggestions
You can see a corrected complete name among the suggestions while you type: Warsawa can bring up Warszawa, and Мнск can bring up Мінск. The last word can be corrected too, without adding a space or submitting the search first.
Correct beginnings such as warsz keep their normal nearby suggestions. Typo corrections look for complete words, so a mistake in a short, unfinished fragment may need a few more letters before the right name appears. Tap the search key on the keyboard whenever you want the full search results.
Available online
This improvement runs on our search servers and needs an internet connection. There is no extra setting to enable or map download to install for it. Search in your downloaded maps continues to work offline with its existing spelling rules.
Corrections look for places around the current map position, so move the map near the place you want to find. Words shorter than four letters are not corrected, and queries with mistakes in several words are outside this first version. Typo correction does not work yet for addresses written with commas; if an address does not match, try entering the street, number, and city without commas.
Curious about how a dictionary can recognize a missing letter? Read our engineering explanation on the Globus blog.