The Welsh village of Cyffylliog was “invaded” by bargain-hunting shoppers looking for a non-existent Aldi supermarket that internet trolls added to Google Maps as a prank.

The “add a missing place” feature on Google Maps can be very useful when used correctly, but when abused by pranksters, it can cause headaches for entire communities. Case in point, Cyffylliog, a quiet Welsh village in Denbighshire whose inhabitants have seen a flood of confused shoppers looking for a “phantom Aldi supermarket” that only exists as a pin on Google Maps. Believed to have been added by a local internet troll, the listing has so far led thousands of people to a grassy field, tens of miles away from the nearest checkout lane. After a milk truck became stuck on a narrow village truck trying to deliver its cargo to the phantom Aldi, locals said that they have been visited by vans trying to deliver groceries and bread to the non-existent supermarket, as well as confused shoppers led there by their smartphones.

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Spanish police have credited a recent Google Maps update for providing them with evidence crucial to solving a murder case that they had been investigating for over a year.

The tragic case of a 33-year-old Cuban man identified only by his initials, JLPO, whose remains were found on the outskirts of Tajueco, a town in the Spanish province of Castille and Leon may soon reach its conclusion thanks to a Google Maps update. JLPO had traveled from Cuba to Spain to visit his wife who was working in the European country, but soon after arriving in Spain, his relatives began receiving weird texts from him. He told his family that he had met a woman in Spain and planned to throw away his phone, so after they stopped hearing from him completely, JLPO’s relatives declared him missing. Parts of JLPO’s nobody were discovered near a Tajueco cemetery late last year, and investigators have been trying to solve his murder ever since.

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A convicted Italian mafia member who has been on the run for almost two decades was recently arrested after being spotted by chance on Google Maps in a small Spanish town.

Gioacchino Gammino, a convicted murderer listed among Italy’s most wanted gangsters, had been on the run for nearly 20 years when he was arrested in Galapagar, a town near Madrid, last month. He had escaped Rome’s Rebibbia jail in 2002 and in 2003 he had been sentenced to life in prison for a murder committed years earlier. A European arrest warrant was issued in 2014, and authorities had managed to track Gammino to Spain, but it was a Google Maps screenshot of two men chatting outside a fruit and vegetable shop that helped police confirm his exact location and make the arrest.

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Indian media recently reported the strange case of a man who allegedly filed a complaint against Google Maps for causing him serious marital problems.

R Chandrasekhar, a 49-year-old married man from India’s Mayiladuthurai district, claims he won’t stop short of taking tech giant Alphabet to court for ruining his relationship with his wife. The man basically blames Google Maps, particularly the app’s “Your Timeline” feature for making his wife question him about all the places he allegedly visits every time he goes out. Chandrasekhar claims that Google’s app routinely displays places he has never visited, and he has trouble explaining it to his wife.

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An eerie art installation located in a barren field in the Finnish countryside recently went viral after someone accidentally stumbled upon it while searching on Google Maps.

With quarantine and isolation measures still in place in many countries around the world, people are spending a lot of time online looking for cool places to visit once they can travel again. Many a re using free tools like Google Maps and end going deeper down the rabbit hole than they originally anticipated. That’s probably how some people recently discovered The Silent People, a creepy-looking art installation that left them scratching their heads about why anyone would fill a field with hundreds of scarecrows and dress them as real people.

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Avenida Iztacalco 9 in Mexico City was one of the most searched addresses on Google Maps this week, after photos of a creepy, doll-covered house located there went viral on social media.

It all started with a short TikTok video shared by user Fernando Mata, who runs a segment called “Weird Things on Google Maps”, where he gradually zooms in on strange things found on the popular platform. In episode three of his series, he featured Avenida Iztacalco 9, an address in Mexico City where a creepy-looking building is supposedly located. With dozens of old and dismembered dolls hanging on its facade and on the fence around the building, it’s not hard to understand why warnings like “Do not search for Avenida Iztacalco 9 on Google Maps before going to bed!” went viral on Twitter and Facebook.

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German artist Simon Weckert recently went viral after posting a video on YouTube dragging a small cart with 99 smartphones on an empty street and tricking Google Maps into showing a traffic jam.

Basically, Weckert loaded 99 smartphones with Google Maps turned on onto a small wagon cart and then pulled that cart around various streets in Berlin, including outside the Google office building. He was thus reportedly able to fool Google’s GPS app into thinking that there was a high concentration of users on those streets. And because the phones were being carried in a slow-moving cart, the app was also tricked into thinking that it was detecting a traffic jam.

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Baunei, an idyllic mountain village on the Italian island of Sardinia, has launched an appeal to visitors asking them to stop relying on the directions of Google Maps when driving around the area.

Salvatore Corrias, the mayor of Baunei, claims that in the last year alone the local fire service or mountain rescue team have been called 144 times to help stranded tourists who had followed the directions of Google Maps. Apparently, people are often using the GPS-powered app to reach so-called “hidden beaches” around Baunei and end up driving down lanes that are unsuitable for cars or onto off-road tracks. To stop this from happening, local police have put up signs that read “Do not follow the directions suggested by Google Maps”.

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