Here's a question for people who have more experience with smart phones than I do. Why doesn't Google give me what I ask for when I do a search on my phone? Here's an example: today I was 60 miles away from Seattle, but I wanted a current view of Seattle traffic so I could plan an efficient route into town. I typed "Seattle traffic map" into the search window. What popped up was a map of my immediate location zoomed in to about a one-mile radius.
 
It took a lot of scrolling and zooming in and out to eventually find what I wanted. By contrast if I do this exact same search from my desktop computer at home, it gives me a map showing the entire Seattle metro area which I can easily zoom in to examine the specific routes I'm interested in.
 
Why do the same search terms give me such different results on the phone and the desktop? It's like Google is guessing what it thinks I want rather than giving me what I ask for. Is there a magic setting I just don't know about?

Disable your location.

57Gregy
Disable your location.

I'll have to give that a try. Of course if I wanted a map of my immediate surroundings, I would ask Google for that instead of a Seattle map. . . .

if i type "seattle traffic map" into the generic google search, it shows a thumbnail but then opens in maps at my current location, like you describe
 
but if i type "seattle traffic"  into the maps search box it shows me the expected seattle traffic map
 
so search directly in maps, not the generic google search
 
/hth

My phone told me this morning that 'if you leave now you can be in Newton Stewart in 28 minutes'.
 
I live 2 miles away. I know my van is 7 years old but that's really rubbing it in...

jamesg1213
My phone told me this morning that 'if you leave now you can be in Newton Stewart in 28 minutes'.
 
I live 2 miles away. I know my van is 7 years old but that's really rubbing it in...

Shirley, it must be by foot? 

Mine has been showing me street views miles away from the location I was just navigating to.  We'll be looking at houses, plug in an address, and it shows the destination point correctly....but then we go to street view to take a look at the neighborhood before we head out, and we're in some random area miles away from the destination point...I have no idea wtf is going on.  

Mesh

jamesg1213
My phone told me this morning that 'if you leave now you can be in Newton Stewart in 28 minutes'.
 
I live 2 miles away. I know my van is 7 years old but that's really rubbing it in...

Shirley, it must be by foot? 

 
Yeah, it just said 'if you leave now you can be in Glasgow by Wednesday'...

I use the Waze app on my iPhone for gps traffic type information, it's excellent. I am assuming that it is available as android as well.

michaelhanson
I use the Waze app on my iPhone for gps traffic type information, it's excellent. I am assuming that it is available as android as well.

Yes, this is a very good app and have been using it on Android for a couple of years now. For those who like to put the pedal to the metal, it also lets you (somewhat) know where the coppers are.