Overview
This page is intended as a reference to help editors understand how Waze determines destinations, when they are entered by address.
While many cases are simple, others are not, and sometimes the most common solutions can hurt more than help. This page should help you resolve URs when the routing to an address is wrong. It will also help you understand the often complex relationship between Google Maps pins (GM), Waze house numbers (HNs), and Waze residential point places (RPPs).
Waze Routing Basics
When you enter a destination into the Waze, it converts it to a GPS point (latitude and longitude). It then finds the closest point on a navigable road and sends you there. If there are exceptions to this rule, I haven't found them. So the trick is always to figure out how and where that GPS point is and, if it's wrong, how Waze got it so you can fix it.
Waze House Number Basics
Each street segment in Waze can have one or more house numbers, visible if you select the segment and click "Edit House Numbers" (or "View House Numbers, if the segment is locked above your editing rank).
- A house number may be unconfirmed (meaning it came from the original base map and no one has verified it), or confirmed (meaning an editor created or confirmed it).
- You can identify a confirmed house number by clicking on it (on a street where you can edit house numbers); you'll see "Last edited by" and an editor name in the top left; if you don't see that, it's unconfirmed.
- If you use the WME HN Tool script, then unconfirmed HNs appear in orange, vs. confirmed ones in white. This is the only way to tell if a HN is confirmed on a segment that's locked above your editing rank.
How Waze converts a destination to a GPS point
This logic is specific to the USA. In other countries, significant differences may apply.
- Waze looks up the address on Google Maps. If Google recognizes the address, then the GPS coordinates of the GM pin are returned. Note that the city/state need not match exactly, as long as they are reasonably close by.
- The Waze map is consulted to see if there is a confirmed HN on the street with the searched name (it can be an alternate name). A mismatch in the street or city name may cause no match to be found, in which case the GM pin is used. But if there is a match, then the GM pin location (if there is one) is ignored, and the pin is set to the stop point for that HN. By design, stop points for HNs are ALWAYS on a segment of the street with the given name, they can never be elsewhere. If the Waze HN is NOT confirmed, it is ignored.
- The Waze map is consulted to see if there is a RPP with the same address; again, street/city must match, at least alternates. If there is, then the GPS location of the RPP is used.