Map Visual plotting wrong location, weighting seems off

[Anonymous]

I have building data come in separate for each element for an address: Address 1, City, State, ZIP. All the data is for a single state. I combine all fields into one Location field, showing a proper address: [Address 1], [City], [State] [ZIP]. Everything works fine, the map is plotting everything correctly (seemingly) for 1400+ buildings. Except for one. Its plotted in another state. The address is formatted correctly, the data is incorrect.

But here's my problem. The data is only incorrect on the [Address 1] field; the data has it listed as a 111 ABC Street when it's supposed to be 111 ABC Avenue. The [City], [State], and [ZIP] data are all correct. Yet Bing plots 111 ABC Street, HomeCity, HomeState 99999 to 111 ABC Street, DifferentCity, DifferentState 88888. The weight for plotting seems to emphasis the Address regardless of what the City, State, or ZIP is telling it where to plot. Since there is no 111 ABC Street in the HomeCity, it seems to find any 111 ABC Street in any city and just plots that. Which makes me question the whole visual. If there are other errors in the data at the Address level, is Bing just plotting the Address and not taking into account the City, State, and ZIP? And if so, it just so happens that the plotting all stays relatively local (in-state) so it's not easy to tell if the plots are accurate or not? If Bing had not plotted one of the buildings in another state and so obviously wrong, I would never have thought to question the weighting of the Map Visual's plots. 

[v-piga-msft]

Hi @Anonymous,

Based on your description, it seems that you have problems for only one  whcih plotted in another state.

Firstly, please check if you have installed the latest version of Power BI Desktop 2.66.5376.2521.

If it is convenient, could you share your sample data which could reproduce your scenario so that I could have a test. 

In addition, I would appreciate it if you could highlight the one which is incorrect and share your desired output.

You could have a referece of the video below which may make sense of you,

Incorrect map locations in Power BI and how to solve it

Best Regards,

Cherry

[Anonymous]

Map these three addresses:

1. 1022 West Main Street, Bowling Green, KY 42104
2. 1155 West Main Street, Shelbyville, KY 40066
3. 308 VoTech Road, Lexington, KY 40511

This is the original data that I received. They should all be in Kentucky, but none of them plot in Kentucky in the standard Map visual. (I haven't tried any other visuals yet.)

1. This one plots to Missouri. The error is in the street address; city, state, and zip are all correct. Change Street to Avenue, then it plots correctly.
2. This one plots to Illinois. This time, the address, city, and state are correct, but the zip is wrong. Change 40066 to 40065 for a correct plot.
3. This one, the address is no more (street was renamed), but the city, state, and zip are correct.

From my observations, I assume Bing/PBI ignores or greatly de-emphasizes State, and puts much more importance on Address, City, and Zip. I think it goes, in order of importance, Address->City->Zip->State (ignored?). I would've assumed that if there are user entry errors, addresses and zips are the first to be wrong, whereas city and state are much more accurate. Bing's 'best guess' when there is a data error is off.

My vote is for Bing/PBI to plot in order of importance: Country->State/Province->City->ZIP/Postal Code->Address. If at any point it can't find a match, it defaults to the last level of correct mapping. So for my three examples, they would all plot to the centerpoint of the state and city that were correct, with some indication that the rest of the address could not be found. I'd rather see a close proximity with an error warning instead of a seemingly out-of-place plot.

Thanks for looking into this.