Posted Nov 3rd 2009 12:10PM by Terrence O'Brien

Filed under: Google, Web

So here's an interesting mystery. How did a town that doesn't exist in reality find itself nestled in an empty green field between two actually real towns in Lancashire, U.K. on Google Maps? Theories are plentiful, but is seems no one knows the true origins of Argleton -- the town that wasn't there.

If you search Google for Argleton, U.K. you'll turn up plenty of results for businesses, real estate, even weather forecasts for the area. Click on over to Maps and you'll find the little British townlet sitting between Aughton and Aughton Park. The problem is that residents of neither Aughton or Aughton Park have ever heard of Argleton. What's stranger, if you follow Google Maps to where Argleton supposedly sits, all you'll find is an empty grass field.
Since so many sites rely on Google Maps for their geographic data Argleton seems to have become a real place. At least as far as the Internet is concerned.

Speculation is that either Argleton is a trick town inserted by Tele Atlas to identify data thieves, or it's a simple misspelling -- entirely possible considering the similarity of the names Argleton and Aughton. Neither Google nor Tele Atlas have seem to know where the town came from however. Google has simply said that it experiences "occasional errors," and points out that the mapping data is provided by Tele Atlas. For their part, Tele Atlas was only able to tell the Guardian that they, "really can't explain why these anomalies get into our database." [From: Telegraph and Guardian]

Tags: argleton, google maps, GoogleMaps, top