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How Google Maps allocates survival across London's restaurants
- x0x0 10mo agoInteresting work, but ultimately silly: of course google maps ranks results. No one (yes, yes, I'm sure like 3 people) want a list of all results, unordered or ordered by something useless like name, when they type in restaurant. And I cannot put into words how uneager I am to have the city or state government manage what comes up when I put indian or burrito into a map.
- rendx 10mo agoWhere in the post do you see the author arguing about "a list of all results"? To me, it merely draws attention to the fact that there is only one algorithm available in Google Maps, and you rely on Google to calculate "relevance" based on (to us) unknown and intransparent metrics. It draws attention to the kind of power Google has over businesses and our daily lives, without necessarily presenting alternatives. Nothing about that is "silly". It might be more relevant to me to learn about new, small, independent restaurants, but I don't have that choice. If I had access to the full data set, like e.g. OSM, I would.
- digitalPhonix 10mo ago> No one (yes, yes, I'm sure like 3 people) want a list of all results, unordered or ordered by something useless like name That's not what the author was suggesting (or indeed, what they built). They were trying to untangle the positive feedback bias showing up first in the rankings gives. I think there's probably a lot more to untangle, but as a first pass it's super cool!
- x0x0 10mo agoIt's the feigned surprise and sort of attitude that google is doing something malicious or it's a subterfuge. Starting with a bolded "Google Maps Is Not a Directory. It’s a Market Maker." and inishing with eg > the most important result isn’t which neighbourhood tops the rankings - it’s the realisation that platforms now quietly structure survival in everyday urban markets. For any service like this, _of course_ ranking is at the core of it. A more honest article could have started there, eg "since you can't display all results, and doing so is useless to everyone, the heart of these products is their ranking algorithm and choices. Let's examine Google's."
- shermantanktop 10mo agoA tone of breathless wonder is now the coin of the realm. Quality research and interesting analysis gets the same treatment as everything else, because that's what gets clicks and responses. Dinging an individual article for this is arbitrary and capricious. Don't hate the player, hate the game. I hate the game too, fwiw.
- x0x0 10mo agoStill a lie though. If you don't know / aren't familiar with a ranker, the author is priming you through the entire article to believe google is doing something wrong or malicious by ranking the results. Rather than the same thing search engines have been doing for 30 years. Whether their ranker is good or bad (and for whom) is separate. Including, of course, the way many popular chain restaurants got there is they make food a lot of people like.
- asdff 10mo agoUhh, I want a list of all the results. I want to be able to search comprehensively within my map viewer frame.
- jeffbee 10mo agoOver small areas you can get that, but the API only returns 20 results, so you will either need a ranking signal over a large area, or a grid search over tiny areas.
- asdff 10mo agoWhat is wrong with alphabetical? It's how the yellow pages used to work.
- x0x0 10mo agoUseless but also stupid. A1 steak house. AAA1 steak house. 00AAA000 steak house.
- febusravenga 10mo agoAaaand that's clear signal to avoid those
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- tehjoker 10mo agoI just looked at google maps and (I didn't realize this previously), but you can scroll the results and it will change the map when you bump against the bottom of the list.
- csoups14 10mo agoNowhere in the article is the author suggesting that local or state governments manage these algorithms, just that they be audited for fairness given the amount of power these algorithms hold in the market. Google operates something of a monopoly in Google Maps and its recommendations. You don't find an attempt to understand the efficacy of its rankings or how Google or market participants could be manipulating the rankings to benefit themselves interesting?
- x0x0 10mo agoYou clearly didn't read it. A direct quote: > At minimum, ranking algorithms with this much economic consequence should be auditable. "At minimum". Immediately preceded by a paragraph starting by "For policy", with sentences like "If discovery now shapes small-business survival, then competition, fairness, and urban regeneration can no longer ignore platform ranking systems" or "tools of local economic policy". That's perhaps not an outright call for regulation, but it's certainly suggesting it's warranted.
- conartist6 10mo agoThe other commenter thought the work was silly, but I think it's brilliant. Keep at this!! You're making me hungry :)
- zem 10mo agosuper interesting project. I would love to generate a similar list for my own neighbourhood
- digitalPhonix 10mo agoYeah! > "I scraped every single restaurant in Greater London" How hard is that now? I assumed that Google is very protective of that data
- _ink_ 10mo agoI would be interested how this was done as well. She mentioned the was using a free tier from Google, so maybe the data is not protected.
- Bowes-Lyon 10mo agoI love the idea! And I want to have it for my city :) Is there a project on GitHub or somewhere that I could clone?? (smiling face with halo)
- dddw 10mo agoSame here!
- HanShotFirst 10mo agoSame!
- _ink_ 10mo agoLooks like she might publish it: https://laurenleek.substack.com/p/how-google-maps-quietly-allocates/comment/186069108 https://laurenleek.substack.com/p/how-google-maps-quietly-al...
- boyka 10mo agoSomeone chose to ignore Google Maps terms and publicly blog about it
- sinuhe69 10mo agoVery interesting. But I wonder how much Google (and other) Maps can actually shape the scene. For tourist hotspots with a lot of visitors, it IS clearly the driving force. But for locals, I don’t think it has an overwhelming effect. Locals know their restaurants and they visit them based on their own rating. They could explore total strange and new ones, but then they will form their own rating and memory immediately and will not get fooled/guided by algorithm (the next time)
- harvey9 10mo agoThe writer is in London where even locals often eat outside their immediate neighborhood.
- asdff 10mo agoDepends if you live in a big city with a lot of restaurant turnover or not. This is actually a big frustration for me how I can search food and get totally different results over the same area in the frame. I seem to remember in the old days of google maps you'd see, you know, everything in the area. Like pins on pins on overlapping pins. And you'd click through them or zoom in as appropriate. You found everything. It all worked. Then someone had the brilliant idea that this was all too busy, and you should have pins omitted until you have sometimes zoomed so far in you are filling your map viewer frame with the doorstep of that business... I wouldn't be surprised to learn businesses get charged to appear first. Seems like it tends to be things like fast food or national chains over new locally owned restaurants that pop up more often on google maps.
- lmz 10mo agoI'm not sure the overlapping pins idea would work for e.g. a 5 floor building with no multilevel maps and 6 businesses to a floor. Which is a common thing in some of the places Google maps.
- immibis 10mo agoWorks for me. If I search "restaurants", and I see a building full of pins. I can now go to that building and look at all the restaurants. You don't want to show every business as a default view, of course.
- dzdt 10mo agoGoogle maps is doing the same thing to local business success that social media algorithms are doing to political success. The algorithm controls what you perceive as the consensus of others. It is a dangerous world to have such power so highly concentrated.
- tkel 10mo agoPerhaps such things should be controlled democratically instead of by a single person or a small group of people whose companies are organized as dictatorships.
- Ferret7446 10mo agoIt is controlled democratically. The people have democratically ceded their knowledge gathering to large companies. Because people are above all else lazy
- tkel 10mo agoThat's not what democracy is. The algorithm is developed in an organization that is structured as a dictatorship.
- Ferret7446 10mo agoAnd each user decided of their own volition to use the service under the pretense of delegating to such an algorithm.
- komali2 10mo ago"Decide" is a heavily weighted word here. From what did they decide? Was the field from which they were deciding, perhaps monopolized, or ologipopalized? Was there information skewed by the entities hoping to be chosen? Do said entities have stunning amounts of capital and power that let them prevent competition?
- 10mo ago
- monerozcash 10mo agoAt least in central London, the "underrated gems" feature does not seem to be very good at finding underrated gems. That might just be a feature of the area though.
- 0_____0 10mo agoI have gotten so sick of Google Maps that I've done the unthinkable, and have started walking around the city trying establishments at random. It has yielded quite good results basically immediately. People (myself included) have gotten too used to living In The Box. Putting aside the time to just go for a walk around and pop into random shops and pubs has been wonderful.
- NoboruWataya 10mo agoNearest hidden gem to me is a Domino's Pizza...
- cheesyted 10mo agoSomeone hasn’t tried the cheesy bread!
- bromuk 10mo agoUsername checks out
- cons0le 10mo agoI'll blow your mind. Go in there and get the pasta primavera. It slaps ( to be fair you can make it at home real easy )
- lpribis 10mo agoSample of 1, but the hidden gem near me I would actually consider a "hidden gem" that only people from the area know about, and it's a very good family run business.
- nicbou 10mo agoIn Germany, businesses routinely bully reviewers into deleting negative reviews, so the scores are meaningless. I only trust what friends recommend.
- patrickmay 10mo agoSerious question: How do they bully online reviewers?
- bay_baobab_ii 10mo agoThis happened to me a few times for my reviews in Germany. My 1-star reviews were flagged by the business as "defamation" although it contained only facts and personal opinions. I provided additional proof like screenshot of their documents (one of them was a language school), but they deleted my review at the end. I was so frustrated, I even considered deleting all of my two hundred something reviews from Google Maps.
- vintermann 10mo agoI already deleted all my reviews from Google Maps. Spent all that money and effort installing a wheelchair elevator in a listed building, then when updating the info to say basically, "it's still not exactly wheelchair-friendly as a 120 year old building, but there is a wheelchair elevator and a HC toilet now", Google algorithmically accused me of lying.
- immibis 10mo agoYou just made me check a business where I left a negative review and was threatened with a lawsuit. I didn't remove it, but Google did automatically. Looks like I'm still algo-banned from leaving a review there (I even tried a 5-star review with no text, and was told their AI found it a violation of content policy, lol) but now above most of the obviously bought 5-star reviews with generic test is a 6-month-old negative review with a lot of "likes", stating the owner files criminal complaints against negative reviewers, they appealed to Google twice, they defended themselves in court, and they saw other negative reviews had been reviewed. (possibly mine) Of course, it also has a reply from the owner, stating this review that says he files criminal complaints against reviewers is a complete lie, and therefore, he's filing a criminal complaint against this reviewer.
- RivieraKid 10mo ago> Google Maps is not just indexing demand - it is actively organising it through a ranking system built on This is where I stopped reading.
- mistercheph 10mo agoWhat's google maps? I use OSM
- tacker2000 10mo agoVery interesting, ive always wondered how google decides to show restaurants or other POIs if they overlap and there is a large density. Im sure they favour the ones that use google ads, but i would not think that they are bullying places a la yelp. Anyway its pretty crazy that nowadays your success as restaurant is so dependent on one huge platform. (… and actually, lets not forget the delivery platforms also)
- fersarr 10mo ago+1 to "We audit financial markets. We should audit attention markets too"
- bbno4 10mo agopretty cool, i'll check some of these out thanks!
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- doctoboggan 10mo agoIt's always annoyed me that zooming in on a building will not reliably show the business that operates there. I understand that at low zoom levels you may need to filter what is displayed based on the high density, but when I zoom in I want to see everything that is there. Sometimes I am forced to go to street view to read the sign, then type the company name into the search box to force the business marker to show up and get clickable. I've found Apple Maps is a little better in this regard. They show a higher density of business markers at any given zoom level.
- DANmode 10mo agoClick on the building, it populates “businesses at this address” - at least, when I’ve tried.
- fsckboy 10mo ago>I am forced to go to street view to read the sign, then type the company name into the search box to force the business marker to show up and get clickable. I've found Apple Maps is a little better in this regard. the way you juxtapose them calls for pointing out, Apple Maps don't have streetview which makes Apple Maps a lot less convenient.
- fragmede 10mo agoWhere are you? Apple street view coverage isn't as extensive as Google's but there's a binoculars button for it if they do for a given location.
- modeless 10mo agoGoogle's Maps search ranking doesn't seem sophisticated to me. In fact it seems unbelievably naive. Ranking is Google's core business and yet they seem to forget how to do it when a map is involved. When I want to find something that's actually good, I use this site: https://top-rated.online https://top-rated.online. At first glance it looks like an unremarkable SEO spam site, but it's actually a great way to get properly ranked Google Maps reviews. It uses proper Bayesian ranking, so it won't show you a 5 star place with two reviews over a 4.9 star place with 2,000 reviews, as Google often will. And it has good sorting and filtering options so you can, for example, filter or sort by number of reviews.
- shalmanese 10mo agoI've said for decades that Google is terrible at search in every area except Google Search. Youtube search? Terrible! Chrome history search? Abysmal! Gmail search? Atrocious! Google Maps Search? At some point, standing in a middle of a mall searching for "coffee" returned only 3 SERPs despite me standing in front of a coffeeshop that I could not get to show up.
- modeless 10mo agoI find YouTube search to be serviceable. At least it has decent filtering and sorting options. Gmail search is just OK, but I haven't found anything much better. Chrome history search, though, is completely worthless. Especially since it got merged into that myactivity thing that is utter garbage, completely non-functional for any purpose. There's so much potential in searching a complete history of everything you've ever personally seen online, and it would make Chrome more sticky. Incredible fumble by Google here.
- shalmanese 10mo agoYoutube search does a baffling thing where it shows you 5 SERPs, then a bunch of unrelated things it thinks you like, then another 5 SERPs. It used to only show you the top 5 SERPs before switching to "suggested videos" for the rest of the scroll. Truly a terrible product when that was the design.
- shalmanese 10mo agoI never understood why the "collaborative filtering" approach never took off with most review options. Google Maps shows you what the average person thinks is a good restaurant, meaning the rich get richer faster and tiny statistical noise converts to durable competitive advantage. Instead, I'd love for Google to understand me well enough to show me which restaurants I would disproportionately love compared to other people based on its understanding of my taste profiles. That way, the love can be shared amongst a much wider base of restaurants and each distinctive restaurant could find its 10,000 true fans. On top of that, it actually gives me an incentive to rate things. Right now, you only rate from some vague sense of public service instead of "this can actively improve your experience with our product". It's not just Google Maps, Netflix used to operate on the model of deep personalization that they've slowly de-emphasized over the years. I'm still waiting for Letterboxd to introduce a feature to give me personalized film recs based on the over 1000 ratings I've given it over the years as a paying customer but they seem in no hurry to do so. Amazon used to take your purchase history into account when ordering search results but I think that's also been significantly de-emphasized. About the only arena this is widespread is streaming music services like Spotify.
- scratchyone 10mo agorelated to your letterboxd suggestion, https://couchmoney.tv https://couchmoney.tv is quite good! it uses trakt instead of letterboxd but it's given me quite a few good suggestions. their FAQ describes a similar approach to what you've been talking about, it tries to find movies and tv you like disproportionately like.
- locofocos 10mo agoI have horrible news for you. Google had it, then they killed it https://www.reddit.com/r/GoogleMaps/comments/1737ft9/google_quietly_killed_your_match/ https://www.reddit.com/r/GoogleMaps/comments/1737ft9/google_...
- samlinnfer 10mo agoFrom the comments it seemed that it didn't work well for everyone?
- willtemperley 10mo agoI don’t think the effect Instagram and TikTok has on this attention market can be ignored. Living in a big Asian city I will check those first.
- thimkerbell 10mo agoIt's a little funny that no one is a human face of (interface to) Google Maps, or any platform with longevity these days. Talk to the faceless pretend person if you have a problem, maybe you'll feel better.
- thimkerbell 10mo ago(they don't fix things anymore, do they?)
- dash2 10mo ago> This disproportionately rewards chains and already-central venues. Chains benefit from cross-location brand recognition. High-footfall areas generate reviews faster.... I think this is very likely false if you mean compared to the status quo ante. Before Maps, a well-loved but hard-to-find venue just wouldn't ever be seen by most people, and the absence of reviews made branding more important because it was all you had to go on. I'd be very doubtful if the proportion of independent cafes and restaurants decreases when Google Maps enters an area. (Couldn't find any causal research designs though....) The more general point that the algorithm is not neutral (and probably never could be) must be right. (I asked ChatGPT but it ended up with: "We have almost no clean exogenous variation in Maps rankings or feature rollouts at fine geographic scales that would let you estimate impacts on entry, survival, or market structure in a neat DiD/IV way.")
- noitpmeder 10mo agoWho the hell cares what garbage chatgpt vomited based on your unspecified chain of prompts?
- secabeen 10mo agoBefore GMaps, we had the Zagat Guides, which were an important way for many restaurants to start pulling in traffic.
- theahura 10mo agoPretty sure this whole post is generated by AI
- class3shock 10mo agoCan anyone recommend an alternative to GMaps for searching for restaurants, services, or general "discovery" near a location?
- kccqzy 10mo agoYelp is the classic. The old Foursquare was also good for discovering where people check in, which is basically a proxy for discovery.
- delichon 10mo agoThe solution is what Lauren did, she rolled her own. Once that took teams of experts and big bucks. Now a single ML expert can do it for small bucks because she "needed a restaurant recommendation" and didn't trust the available ones. Soon any mild mannered programmer will have the same capability, and then the muggles will get it, in a mass, just for the asking of their favorite chat bot. If the progression holds, oodles of recommendation engines can bloom, and it'll be trivial to fork and customize a favorite with a prompt. As the friction of doing large analysis jobs tends toward nil, the Google moat dries up and their commanding height subsides. Too optimistic?
- andai 10mo agoThere's a couple different threads here. Can we make a decentralized search engine. Which breaks down into two questions, is it technically feasible and is it socially feasible? (Maybe the word search would be a bit more broad than retrieving web pages. It could be for everything right.) I don't know but I'm inclined to say that the difficulty will be more on the social side than on the technical side. The web was very decentralized 20 years ago, and we had all manner of peer to peer systems already. There just doesn't seem to be much appetite for that kind of thing, at least in the mainstream. Although there might be something to it, with the AI part of the equation. Like we had self hostable services for a long time, most people just don't want to be a sysadmin. Well, I gave Claude root on my $3 VPS. Claude is my sysadmin now. I don't have to configure anything anymore. Life is good :)
- gleenn 10mo agoThe data is the key though. How did they effectively scrape the data? Does every restaurant have a website? I bet half rely on Google Maps. So IMHO you are too optimistic because regularly and effectively getting the data is the hard part, not the model.
- TrackerFF 10mo agoThis right here. Every time I see these types of articles, I jump straight to the chapter regarding data, and it usually a single line of "I scraped the data", sometimes with explanation, most times not. In this case it seems like she used their API to get the data. But as she notes, scraping can quickly mean having to spend money. And that's where the scraping dream ends for many people - if they have to spend money in any way, shape, or form, it's a non-starter.
- nomilk 10mo agoDelivery apps like Grab and Uber Eats are even worse since they have even more perverse incentives (minimising delivery time and maximising 'sponsored' listings). Other than being willing to scroll a lot, I haven't found any great ways to find new restaurants when using delivery apps, and I'm sure I use them far less because of the tedium involved. I think scraping listings and re-doing the algorithm yourself (as per post) is perhaps the best approach. E.g. Just being able to rank by user rating and filter for no less than 200 reviews and within 5km would be an outstanding improvement on the status quo, which is always the 50 closest restaurants to the delivery address - what a coincidence! - with a few 'sponsored' listings thrown in.
- ozbonus 10mo agoGoogle Maps stopped being a reliable way to find good restaurants a long time ago. Any time in my city when I see a place with a high rating and suspiciously large number of reviews, searching for "five stars" in the reviews inevitably finds customers helpfully mentioning that they got free food in exchange. I've even seen places advertise the bribe openly on Maps. It would be trivial to detect this and punish offenders, but Google chooses not to. I've been mulling over starting a boutique social network focused on location reviews with real life friends exclusively.
- entuno 10mo agoI've seen several places that have a note printed on their menus offering a discount for a positive review.
- DeathArrow 10mo ago>Because once you start looking at London’s restaurant scene through data, you stop seeing all those cute independents and hot new openings. You start seeing an algorithmic market - one where visibility compounds, demand snowballs, and who gets to survive is increasingly decided by code. Seems a bit weird. That would mean most people in London would chose the restaurant based on Google maps reviews.
- DeathArrow 10mo agoSo if you had an online business, you had to do SEO and optimize for search engines. Now, if you have a brick and mortar business you still have to keep the algorithms happy? Sounds like life becomes harder for some business owners.
- komali2 10mo agoWe had a bizarre time as a brick and mortar being even allowed to be on Google Maps. We had to take multiple pictures and videos of outside of our business with our sign, and then schedule a call with someone not in our country (or didn't speak mandarin anyway), then show them in a video call our outside of the restaurant, us locking and unlocking the door of our restaurant, us opening our cash drawer, then showing receipts, then our back storage room. It was super uncanny.
- DeathArrow 10mo agoNot sure if it's a London thing. In my city neither I, nor the people I know rely on Google maps reviews for picking restaurants. We either know the place, follow a recommendation or try the place based on menu, price, looks, vibe, position etc. A week ago I went to Venice and I only looked on Google maps to see what the menus and prices are, but I wasn't interested in the reviews themselves or the grade, bacause IMO, people have biases. One evening we went to one of the restaurants I spotted on Google maps but the rest of the evenings we wandered the streets, and picked what was close, if we liked the menus, the prices and the atmosphere. One of the restaurants had only 3.4 grade on Google maps, few reviews and mostly locals ate there. The food was very good and the service was great. I do not generally make my mind based on reviews from Google Maps, Booking, Amazon. Of course, if the overall grade is very low, I will give it some thoughts and maybe read some reviews. But generally I don't make a decision based on reviews.
- qweiopqweiop 10mo agoI'll go against the grain slightly and say that usually Google ratings are quite reliable for me. At times I notice they're exaggerated and it usually coincides with someone coming to ask me to rate them at the end of the meal.
- sunnyam 10mo agoI don't think this is saying that the ratings are unreliable, but rather that searching by rating isn't a guarantee that a high-rated restaurant will show up due to the other factors at play. You don't get a sorted list from highest rated to lowest rated, but rather, momentum of reviews, number of reviews, changes in rating etc. My suspicion is that there probably is also a noticeable difference between companies that advertise on Google vs. those that don't. Anecdotally, the gym closest to me has higher ratings than all the other gyms in my area, but when I moved to the area it never showed up on Google Maps for me. It was only by walking by it that I decided to look it up on Google Maps specifically by name that it showed up for me.
- dazc 10mo agoThere are good businesses out there that don't get a lot of reviews because they don't ask for them. Relying upon customers to do this without a prompt is not something I'd recommend.
- kh_hk 10mo agoPost could benefit from a terser writing that has not gone through AI. It took me extra effort to distil useful information from all the noise of what otherwise would be a great post.
- virtualritz 10mo ago> One practical problem I ran into early on is that Google Maps is surprisingly bad at categorising cuisines. A huge share of restaurants are labelled vaguely (“restaurant”, “cafe”, “meal takeaway”) It's not only that; cuisines are also difficult to label as certain countries simple do not exist for Google when it comes to that. I recall last year I wanted to change the type of "Alin Gaza Kitchen", my ex (closed now, unfortunately) fav. falafel place in Berlin from the non-descript "Middle-Eastern" to "Palaestinian" category. I assumed this was available for any country/cuisine, like "German", "Italian" or "Israeli". But "Paleastinian" didn't exist as a category.
- kiney 10mo agoof course not. There is not such country after all.
- jrflowers 10mo agoGotta love an “I personally know better than pretty much everybody else on earth” post https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_recognition_of_Palestine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_recognition_of_P...
- jackbrookes 10mo agoBy that logic, 'Basque', 'Cantonese', 'Cajun', and 'Tex-Mex' shouldn't exist either
- gniv 10mo agoThe vague categorisation is likely on purpose, done by the business owner thinking that it would attract more clients. You can change it yourself and Google will accept it but if the owner is adamant they will change it back.
- pjs_ 10mo agoGoogle Maps is the mind killer. We all worry about social media controlling the way we think, feel, vote etc. but Google Maps literally manipulates where people physically go in real life, what they do on holiday, where they hang out, what they eat etc. I got so sick of feeling like a four point five star Google Maps automaton I had to mostly stop with it. In addition to OSM, personal recommendations etc. the best substitute for me for a 4.5 star review is my nose, eyes and ears
- badgersnake 10mo agoGoogle Maps is just advertising now. Not sure why anyone chooses to use it over better alternatives.
- zacharybk 10mo agoThis is incredible, thank you for putting in the time to create it.
- whywhywhywhy 10mo agoGoogle Maps is up for the dethroning to the first competitor that has the same information and shows it all at the closest zoom level.
- tylervigen 10mo ago> Google Maps Is Not a Directory. It’s a Market Maker. I understand the author's meaning, but this isn't what the term "market maker" means. To "make a market" is to stand ready to buy and sell, usually a security, in order to create liquidity in a market. Usually this resolves the issue of timing, because it is unlikely that someone wants to buy at the exact moment someone else wants to sell. So to "make a market" in London restaurants, Google could buy food during the day and sell it at night when the shops are closed but people are hungry. (This would be silly.) Perhaps a more precise term is "algorithmic gatekeeper."
- Croftengea 10mo agoHowever, market makers have some leverage on the market they operate in, that's what the author probably meant.
- shellfishgene 10mo agoI often think it would be cool if there was a widely understood hand sign for asking people in a restaurant how they rate it. You stand outside the window and make the "Is it good?" sign, and whoever sees it from inside would hold up 1 to 5 fingers to give their star rating.
- WOTERMEON 10mo agoPoint twice to them. Point to the space in front of your lap. Point to your face and mimic sad face and later happy face, while pointing your thumb down then up, à la Roman emperor.
- a3w 10mo ago"rating to low by 1.3" for a restaurant rated 5/5. WTF? One and zero are not probabilities, and 6 out of 5 is not a rating.
- philipwhiuk 10mo agoDataset seems imperfect, a good local fish and chip shop shown on Google Maps isn't listed. Interesting points tho.
- itissid 10mo agoNicely done. I think from a product perspective it is interesting that: - Humans really value authentic experiences. And more so IRL experiences. People's words about a restaurant matter more than the star rating to me. - There is only one reason to go somewhere: 4.5 star reason. But there are 10 different reasons to not go: Too far, not my cuisine, too expensive for my taste. So the context is what really matters. - Small is better. Product wise, scale always is a problem, because the needs of the product will end up discriminating against a large minority. You need it to be decentralized and organic, with communities that are quirky. All this is, somehow, anethma to google maps or yelp's algorithm. But I don't understand why it is _so_ bad — just try searching for 'salad' — and be amazed how it will recommend a white table cloth restaurant in the same breath as chipotle. There are many millions that want to use the product _more_ if it was personalized. Yet somehow its not.
- bloppe 10mo ago> People's words about a restaurant matter more than the star rating to me. I find that both offer an incredibly poor signal. I can usually get a much better idea of the quality of the place by looking at pictures of the food (especially the ones submitted by normal users right after their plate arrives at the table). It's more time consuming to scroll through pictures manually than to look at the stars, but I'm convinced it's a much better way to find quality. Maybe that could be a good angle for this kind of tool. At least until this process becomes more popular and the restaurants try to game that too by using dishonest photography.
- psadri 10mo agoGoogle Maps or any other aggregator has an inherent interest in market participant diversity. A lot of suppliers would mean competition, which results in ad spend, which result in higher revenue for the aggregator. Same with Google Search. It's an interesting equilibrium point. They want local businesses to suffer enough to pay up for ads. But also not too much that they die. A good local business that does not need to advertise because it is simply good is actually a burden to the aggregator even though it is exactly what the end users want to see. In the past, when I was a in position to build a search engine, we took the trouble of always including organically ranked results that were genuinely good, regardless of whether we got paid or not. I felt it was a long term investment into creating real value for our end users and therefore our service.
- anti-soyboy 10mo agoGoogle develops all kind of bullshit because it is funnier than working
- chatmasta 10mo agoThis reminds me of a post earlier this year, “Looksmapping” [0], where the author ranked restaurants by the attractiveness of the reviewers according to their profile photos. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44461015 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44461015