It's rather common for people to post links to Google Maps, to point out either a particular place on the map, or a particular Street View scene. Sometimes, the folks who generate these links perform a search to quickly zoom to their area of interest, before panning to the actual view they want to share. It may not be obvious, but the query is actually retained in the link that is shared on the forum, even when the short-form is used.
This is a problem for me when I'm trying to follow a link on my smart phone. Whether I let the Google Maps app handle the request, or leave it to the browser and the mobile Google Maps site, it sees that query and then shows me Google Maps search results for that phrase, instead of the exact location encoded in the link. This is rather frustrating, as it completely defeats the intended purpose of the shared link.
Please, people, remove your query from your Google Maps view before copying a link to share on the forum. It's quite easy; just hover over the layers menu (which is normally collapsed to just "Traffic") and click the × next to your search phrase. Then, when you copy a link to what you're looking at, it will truly be a link just to what you're looking at and nothing else.
PS & Edit: Thanks to whichever moderator made this a sticky :-)
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Topic: Links to Google Maps: Remove Query String Please! (Read 13070 times)