My store locator pin is in the wrong place: find it, drag it, lock it
October 2026
One of your stockists is showing in the city centre, or in the next town over. The address in your spreadsheet looks fine. This is why it happens, how to find every pin like it, and how to fix one so that it stays fixed.
The steps use Nearmio's fix queue. The reasons a pin lands wrong apply to any store locator that works out pin positions from addresses.
Why an address lands in the wrong place
A locator turns each address into a point on the map. When the lookup cannot find the exact building, it falls back to something vaguer. Three common causes:
- Only the city or postcode could be found. The street name is misspelled, the house number does not exist, or the street is missing, so the pin lands on the middle of the city or postcode area.
- The result is in a different region or country from the one in your row. A postcode that exists in two countries is a common case.
- Nothing matched at all. A new development, a PO box, or a city and postcode that disagree.
Nearmio does not quietly guess in these cases. It flags the location so that you can look at it.
Find the flagged pins
In the Nearmio app, open Locations and choose Needs attention. The list narrows to the locations whose pin is missing or doubtful. If there are any, the yellow banner at the top of Locations shows the same count, with a Fix pins → link. Each row has a status badge:
| Badge | What it means |
|---|---|
| Needs fixing | The address could not be placed. The location has no pin and is not on your storefront map. |
| Check pin | The address was placed, but not with confidence, often at the centre of the city or postcode. The pin is on your storefront map at that approximate spot. |
| Placed | The address was placed with confidence. Nothing to do. |
| Placed (manual) | You dragged the pin and confirmed it. It is locked there. |
| Pending | Waiting to be placed. During a large import you will see this for a while. |
Needs fixing and Check pin are the two badges that count towards Needs attention. Fix Needs fixing first: shoppers cannot see those stores at all.
Drag the pin and confirm it
- On a flagged row, choose Fix pin. It replaces the usual Edit action.
- The edit page has a Map preview showing where the pin is now. If the location could not be placed at all, the map opens on the country.
- Zoom in, then drag the pin (or click the map) to where the store really is.
- Choose Confirm pin location. The button stays greyed out until the pin has moved, and nothing is saved while you drag.
Confirming locks the pin where you put it. You go back to Locations, the row now reads Placed (manual), and the Needs attention count is one lower.
Or correct the address and save
If the pin is wrong because the address was wrong (a typo in the street, a missing city, the wrong country), fix the address fields and choose Save changes. Nearmio places the pin again. If the new spot is still uncertain, the location stays flagged and you can drag it as above.
Saving counts as an address change only if the street line, city, region, postcode or country changed, ignoring capitals and extra spaces. Editing the phone number, the hours or address line 2 leaves the pin alone.
One catch: changing the address of a pin you confirmed by hand places it again, and the lock is gone. Change the address only when the address is the problem.
Which pins shoppers can't see yet
- Needs fixing locations are left off the storefront map. They have no pin, so nothing is shown in the wrong place.
- Check pin locations are on the map at their approximate spot until you confirm or correct them. A shopper can see them, and the spot may be a few streets or a town away.
- Placed and Placed (manual) locations are on the map.
So a Check pin is not a safe place to leave a store. Open the edit page, look at the map, and either confirm the pin or move it.
What a re-import does to a fixed pin
When you upload your spreadsheet again, each row is matched to an existing location by its external_id if it has one (or, the first time you add the ID, by its address, when that location has no ID yet), otherwise by its address. What happens to a pin you confirmed depends on the row:
| The row in your file | The pin |
|---|---|
Matches, address unchanged, no lat or lng | Stays where you put it, lock included. |
Matches and has lat and lng | Moves to the coordinates in the file. The lock is gone and the row reads Placed. |
Matches by external_id, address changed, no lat or lng | Placed again. The lock is gone, and the location may be flagged. |
No external_id and the address changed | Does not match. It is added as a new location, and the old location keeps its pin. |
Watch out for coordinates in the file. A re-import row with lat and lng overwrites a pin you confirmed by hand and drops the lock. If your export tool fills in coordinates on every row, upload without those two columns, or leave the cells blank for the stores you fixed.
Re-uploading does not retry a location that Needs fixing. If its address is unchanged, the other cells are updated but nothing is looked up again, and it stays flagged. Correct the address in the file, or fix the pin in the app.
The full matching rules, and what the import preview shows, are in how the CSV import works.
Checklist
- After every import, open Locations and check Needs attention.
- Fix the Needs fixing rows first, then the Check pin rows.
- Zoom in before you drag, and confirm each pin.
- Leave
latandlngout of the file for stores you fixed by hand. - Keep the address text of a fixed store the same in later files.
- Put an
external_idon every row from your first upload.
If you use Shopify Sidekick, it can list the pins that need fixing, with the reason for each. See Import any stockist spreadsheet with Shopify Sidekick. The steps above are also in the help center, and how to keep your stockist list up to date covers the upkeep.
Free for up to 5 locations, no Google API key to set up.