Argleton

Argleton

Aerial view of the locality. One field is marked with a red pin and labelled "Argleton". A nearby settlement is marked "Aughton".
Google Maps location
Creator Google Inc
Type Copyright trap
Notable locations West Lancashire, England
Photo of a large, flat field, surrounded by trees in the far distance.
View of an empty field from Bold Lane in Aughton, looking north towards the supposed location of Argleton.

Argleton was a phantom settlement that appeared on Google Maps and Google Earth but does not actually exist. The supposed location of Argleton was just off the A59 road within the civil parish of Aughton in West Lancashire, England, which in reality is nothing more than empty fields.[1][2] Data from Google are used by other online information services which consequently treated Argleton as a real settlement within the L39 postcode area. As a result, Argleton also appeared in numerous listings for things such as real estate, employment and weather, but although the people, businesses and services listed are all in fact real, they are actually based elsewhere in the same postcode district.[1][3] Google later removed the town from Google Maps.[4]

Media interest

The anomaly was first noticed by Mike Nolan, head of web services at nearby Edge Hill University, who posted about it on his blog in September 2008.[2][5] In early 2009 it was investigated further by Nolan's colleague, Roy Bayfield, who walked to the area shown on Google Maps to see if there was anything special about it. Bayfield commented about it on his own blog and described the place as being "deceptively normal" as well as exploring the concept of a non-existent place using the tropes of magic realism and psychogeography; the story was later picked up by the local media.[6][7] By November 2009, news of the non-existent town had received global media attention, and "Argleton" became a popular hashtag on Twitter.[2][8] As of 23 December 2009, a Google search for "Argleton" was generating around 249,000 hits, and the domain names argleton.com (with the message, "What the hell are they talking about? We, the good citizens of Argleton do exist. Here we are now!")[9] and argleton-village.co.uk (a spoof website describing the history of Argleton, famous "Argletonians" and current events in the fictional village)[10] were claimed. Other websites were selling merchandise with slogans such as "I visited Argleton and all I got was this T-shirt" and "New York, London, Paris, Argleton".[3]

On 18 September 2010, the BBC Radio 4 programme Punt PI hosted by Steve Punt investigated the case of Argleton.[11]

Explanations

One possible explanation for the presence of Argleton is that it was added deliberately as a copyright trap, or "paper town" as they are sometimes known, to catch any violations of copyright, though such bogus entries are typically much less obvious. It has been noted that "Argle" seems to echo the word "Google", while the name is also an anagram of "Not Large" and "Not Real G", with the letter G perhaps representing Google.[1][12] Alternatively, it has been suggested that "Argleton" is merely a misspelling of "Aughton", although both names appear on the map.[8] "Argle" is also a somewhat common metasyntactic variable, the kind of placeholder names used by computer programmers. "Argle-bargle" is a term for an argument. Professor Danny Dorling, president of the Society of Cartographers, considered it more likely that Argleton was nothing more than an "innocent mistake".[2]

A spokesman for Google stated that, "While the vast majority of this information is correct there are occasional errors", and encouraged users to report any issues directly to their data provider. Data for Google Maps are provided by Netherlands-based Tele Atlas, who were unable to explain how such anomalies could get into their database, but said that Argleton would be removed from the map.[1] By May 2010, the location had been removed from Google Maps.[4]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Lefort, Rebecca (31 October 2009). "Mystery of Argleton, the 'Google' town that only exists online". Telegraph.co.uk. Retrieved on 6 November 2009.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Hickman, Leo (3 November 2009). "Welcome to Argleton, the town that doesn't exist". Guardian.co.uk. Retrieved on 6 November 2009.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Ramachandran, Arjun (4 November 2009). "Argleton: the phantom town that Google created". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved on 7 November 2009.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Kleinman, Zoe. "FutureEverything gathers technology's avant garde". BBC News. Retrieved 28 August 2013.
  5. ↑ Nolan, Mike (9 September 2008). "Google Renames Village". Web Services at Edge Hill University. Retrieved on 6 November 2009.
  6. ↑ Jaleel, Gemma (2 April 2009). "Ormskirk man Roy Bayfield visits the Bermuda Triangle of West Lancashire – Argleton in Aughton". Ormskirk & Skelmersdale Advertiser. Retrieved on 7 November 2009.
  7. ↑ Bayfield, Roy (22 February 2009). "Destination: Argleton! Visiting an imaginary place". Walking Home to 50. Retrieved on 7 November 2009.
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 Jaleel, Gemma (5 November 2009). "Advertiser leads way over mystery Google Map town Argleton". Ormskirk & Skelmersdale Advertiser. Retrieved on 7 November 2009.
  9. ↑ Heusner, Ki Mae & Potter, Ned (4 November 2009). "Google Maps Mystery: Phantom Town Only Exists Online". ABC News. Retrieved on 7 November 2009.
  10. ↑ "Argleton, Lancashire village". Archived from the original on 2010-01-09.
  11. ↑ Punt PI, BBC Radio 4, 18 September 2010
  12. ↑ "Mystery of phantom Google village". BBC Liverpool (3 November 2009). Retrieved on 7 November 2009.

External links