"Come here often?" suggested locations

[poit57]

I've had several locations that Cortana has suggested that I nickname in order "to get relevant suggestions and easily set reminders." All of the locations have been places that I actually do frequent, but not all are places that I care to add to my favorites. Of these suggestions, none of them ever corresponded with a location that I had manually added to my favorite places until today.

The suggested location is my workplace, which I already have saved as "work" in the favorite places in the Cortana settings. The thing is, the new marker on the map is about 3 blocks away from the street address listed because it is a very large facility. I thought the distance between the spot I actually sit all day and the street address was small enough to be recognized as the same location, but I guess not. I do find it strange, however, that if this is not the case, why this was about the sixth suggested location over the past several months when this is actually the place that I spend the majority of my time other than home.

 

[snowmutt]

So for the record... are you confused it shows your work as 2 different places, or confused that it only shows up as the sixth suggestion?

I am actually confused as to the advantages of these "favorite places". What does Cortana do for you after designating a place as your favorite?

 

[poit57]

I don't really understand the usefulness of it either other than the traffic reminders for my daily commute to work. I just thought it was weird that Cortana doesn't realize I'm at work when I spend 8 hours of the day about 3 blocks from the address I already have stored as "work." I actually did think I Cortana recognized that I was in the vicinity of my workplace prior to this because this suggestion had never popped up before. I would have thought, if the suggestions are based on how often you visit the same locations, that the place that you visit the most would probably be the first suggestion, which is why I pointed out that this was the 6th suggested location that Cortana suggested I saved in my favorites.

Anyway, I don't really expect anyone here has a detailed explanation for this behavior. I just thought this was an odd behavior and wanted to see if anyone else had noticed something like this.

 

[mark233]

I am actually confused as to the advantages of these "favorite places". What does Cortana do for you after designating a place as your favorite?

Designating 'favorite places' is useful for location based reminders. For example I could ask Cortana "remind me to get beer when I leave work" so when I get a certain distance from my work I'll get an audible notification (default sound for notifications) + on screen alert to 'get beer'. I've also used Cortana to 'Remind me to tell Lisa about upcoming concert when I get to Lisa's apartment' ('Lisa's apartment' is in Cortana's places). When I get to her apartment I'll get the Cortana reminder audible+on-screen notification.
"Remind me to get potato chips when I'm at QuikTrip" ..... etc ...

 

[k72]

Last time I cleared Cortana data she asked if my school was my work (close enough) and about home after about 2 days. Last week I moved and started a new job, and I've kept my location on, and it's been a week, and no suggestions yet.