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).
Basics
Most seasoned editors will be familiar with most of these basics, but will still benefit from reading them - there may well be a few things you didn't know.
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).
- In editing mode, if you click any HN, you can see two dots associated with it - one near the number, and one on the street, connected by a dotted line. The location of each dot has meaning as described below.
- 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.
- Waze editing standards say that in confirming a HN, the number (or the dot next to it, when editing it) should normally be centered on the roof. This is used ONLY to display where the destination is on the app's map; it may be near the road or far away. But it doesn't affect routing, so there's no reason to put it anywhere other than where the standard says.
- Waze editing standards say that the stop point for a HN should normally be at the end of the driveway; you can find the full standard here. This point DOES affect routing, so placement matters.
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.
GM pin problems
- Mislocated
- Duplicates (including variants without a required cardinal)
- Wrong or inconsistent spelling
Fixing HNs on a block
RPP problems
- When you can't save an apparently valid RPP (the hidden layer)
API handoffs e.g. Uber
=Update schedules
- GM
- Waze HN layer