Switzerland – Country Specific Guidelines

1 Introduction

The purpose of this document is to provide guidance for rating within the Swiss market. As such, these guidelines should be considered supplemental to the Global Guidelines for each mode.

In regard to address expectations, these guidelines cover all languages in the Swiss market

2 Address Components

.2.1 Address Expectations for Results

Switzerland has four national languages: German, French, Italian and Romansh. The language of an address result should match the official language of the result location. For example, an address in Basel should always be in German, while an address in Lausanne should always be in French. Addresses in bilingual areas might have two official names – both are considered equally correct.

In Swiss German speaking regions, it is possible for official street names to be in Swiss German dialect, for example Mettlengässli. Street names with Swiss German dialects that are listed officially are considered correct and should not be demoted.

Within Switzerland, localities whose names begin with an Umlaut should use the alternative umlaut spellings: AE, OE and UE.

In Swiss German, the letter ß is not used. Therefore, the street type ‘Straße’, spelled with the letter ß, is considered incorrect spelling. The correct spelling is “Strasse” or “Str”. If the street type uses the ‘Straße’ spelling, the Address Accuracy should be rated Incorrect: Street Name.

Switzerland has two types of entities on the locality level: Gemeinden and Ortschaften. Gemeinden are the lowest level of administrative sub-divisions while Ortschaften are the postal localities. In many cases, the Orschaft has the same boundaries and name as the Gemeinde but in some cases, a Gemeinde has more than one Ortschaft. Smaller entities within these localities are considered sub-localities.

An online list with Ortschaften and Gemeinden in Switzerland can be found on the website of the Swiss Land Registry Services (Cadastre) or the correct Ortschaft can be found on the post code (PLZ) search page of the Swiss postal services website.

The locality component in Switzerland address and street results should always be the Ortschaft. If the Gemeinde is returned, and this is different from the Ortschaft, address accuracy should be rated Incorrect – Locality

Result Address                                                         Standard Address                                                                        Rating

Postal codes are not expected for locality or sub-locality results. If we do show the locality with a postal code, even if correct, the address accuracy should be rated Incorrect – Other.

2.4 Canton abbreviations

Some Ortschaften and Gemeinden are distinguished from others by additional abbreviations of the Canton they are in. If they are present in the official sources listed above, they should be part of the result. The abbreviations, when present, should be ion brackets. When the Canton abbreviation is missing, or present when not next to the names in the official sources rate Incorrect – Locality.

3 Business/POI Results

For business and POI results, the names should generally be in the language of the market.

For example, both ‘Die Post’ in German and ‘La Poste’ in French are official names of the Swiss postal service, but since the market de_CH indicates the language is German the name should be returned as ‘Die Post’. A result with the name ‘La Poste’ would get the Name Accuracy rating Partially Correct.

However, if the query is in a language other than German and the result matches this language there should be no demotion.

Official names are always considered correct regardless of the test language. The restaurant chain ‘Marché’ is never translated as ‘Markt’ and so it should always appear as ‘Marché’ regardless of the market language.

Business results can sometimes include the name of the owner or part of the corporate name in the official business name. If the business name can still be recognized the rating should be Partially Correct. If the business name can’t be recognized the rating should be Incorrect.

S-Bahn station results, the commuter transit networks around urban areas, are considered as equivalent to regular train stations. They are regarded as valid matches for ‘train’-related queries and not demoted for Relevance.

Platforms where passenger on and off-board trains are considered as stations even if there are no buildings present. They should be considered valid matches for ‘station’ queries and the classification ‘Bahnhof’ is considered correct.

The first step in determining Relevance is to determine if the suggestion is a match to the query. Umlauts can influence whether or not a suggestion can be considered a match.

Users will sometimes drop the Umlaut while they type for the sake of efficiency. If our suggestion contains the Umlaut mark and the query does not, still consider it a match after considering the location and prominence.

If the Umlaut is included in the query string, consider suggestions that contain the Umlaut to be the likeliest match. Since the user took the time to type this, suggestions that do not contain the Umlaut should generally not be considered matches. Exceptions to this would be if there are no possible matching suggestions that contain the Umlaut or if including the mark is a common misspelling.

Consider possible common misspellings when deciding if a suggestion is a match based on the presence or absence of an Umlaut in the query string.

Routing is generally a bit harder in Switzerland, since sometimes there is no street level imagery available to confirm the ground truth. It then needs an extra step of research to confirm a (newly built) roundabout, a pedestrian only area etc.

Newspaper articles or published articles on city websites are a good way to confirm a step, as well as pictures of businesses around the questionable area. We can consider those valid sources and should provide a link to the source in the comment section.

There is no clear-cut rule in Switzerland on how to deal with U-turns. The best way to rate such a suggested step is to evaluate the road, through satellite imagery and street imagery, where available.

In general, a U-turn is not possible when there is no designated left-turn lane. The car would block cars coming up behind them and create an unsafe situation.

If it is a smaller street, with lesser traffic and/or no designated lanes we would need to evaluate the width of the road and if a U-turn could be performed in one turn. If this is not possible and the user would have to reverse half way through in order to perform the U-turn, it is safe to say that the U-turn is impossible.

In Switzerland there are many one-way streets and also blocked off streets with barriers or bollards. While it sometimes is hard to see in only satellite imagery, we should do our best in researching the access to a street.

Sometimes the blue line misaligns with the satellite imagery. Do not judge Against Traffic, if the route seems to be turning onto the wrong lane. Take a look at the vector

layer and rate accordingly. A user will likely never zoom in closely on the satellite layer and take the wrong lane based on the imagery.

Often a route has to cross a mountain range – either by tunnel or a car train. Consider this when a blue line just seems to run off a street into the landscape.