Google Earth is a fun and useful utility, but it's far from perfect.

I found myself searching for the town of LaPointe, Wisconsin on Google Earth yesterday evening.  And depending on how you type the town's name, you get entirely different results.

LaPointe is the commercial zone on Madeline Island, located at the southwestern tip of the Island.  LaPointe Township includes the entire island.  Madeline Island is one of the twenty-two Apostle Islands in western Lake Superior, situated about seventy-five miles east of the Duluth-Superior metropolitan area.

There seems to be a sort of eternal debate among Islanders (and summer residents) about whether there should be a space between "La" and "Pointe".  It seems to make a difference on the Web when you're searching for our town.  I have seen some search engines generate results based upon two separate words, rather than upon the town's complete name, when the space is utilized. 

Anyway, Google Earth shows two very different locations for the town of LaPointe (or La Pointe):

• Under "Search" and "Fly to", if you type in "La Pointe", you get a location on Oak Island, in the Apostle Islands region of Lake Superior.  Oak Island is part of the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore, miles from the town of LaPointe.
• If you type in "LaPointe", you will see multiple results for LaPointe businesses, including our company, Madeline Island Realty.

In Google Maps, you can submit a correction by visiting TeleAtlas.com.  TeleAtlas feeds corrections in map locations to Google Maps on a regular basis, although it may take some time for the change to appear on the Web.

I haven't yet figured out how to get Google Earth to recognize that the town of LaPointe is NOT located on Oak Island.

Maybe it would be a good idea if we could all arrive at some uniformity about whether to use "La Pointe" or "LaPointe" on the Web.