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What does it use for the ratings/restaurant data? I'm in a part of Tokyo with tons of restaurants and was disappointed to see that it brought up a bakery and a

What does it use for the ratings/restaurant data? I'm in a part of Tokyo with tons of restaurants and was disappointed to see that it brought up a bakery and a pop idol cafe for my first and second hits -- not only are they not especially good for meals, they're both pretty far from me.

jfoster 11y ago
It uses Google's ratings data. The same ratings you would see in Google Maps, but unlike Google Maps, it sorts the results by rating. You can change the radius through the location menu. I did initially have the default radius as something smaller, but that didn't work so well outside of city centers. I'll be making an update so that (when not explicitly specified) the radius will be increased/decreased based on volume & quality of results. I'm okay with it showing places that are not perfect for meals. If there's an exceptional bakery nearby, I think that warrants it being listed. I like to use the "image" button for this; I find that it gives a really good feel for what to expect from a place.
- sdrothrock 11y ago
  I actually went back to look again after you mentioned the radius and noticed that the site tags my number one hit as a bakery when it's actually a store that just sells snacks. (Think mini bags of potato chips, candy, etc. Grocery store stuff.) I guess the problem with this area in particular is that the people who rate things on Google tend to be tourists and not people who live/work here, so the ratings tend to skew high on tourist attractions rather than places that are actually good to eat at. (If you were curious, the second result was the AKB48 cafe in Akihabara.) Design-wise, I never would have thought to look for a radius setting under the location menu. Playing with it didn't help much; I think it's just a problem with people in Japan not rating things on Google. Oh, well!
helb 11y ago
In my location, there's a beer pub with no meals at the third place and a whorehouse on the 4th. Maybe it would be useful – and probably easy – to at least enable filtering by these tags ("restaurant", "bar" etc.) on the right.

jfoster 11y ago

It uses Google's ratings data. The same ratings you would see in Google Maps, but unlike Google Maps, it sorts the results by rating. You can change the radius through the location menu. I did initially have the default radius as something smaller, but that didn't work so well outside of city centers. I'll be making an update so that (when not explicitly specified) the radius will be increased/decreased based on volume & quality of results. I'm okay with it showing places that are not perfect for meals. If there's an exceptional bakery nearby, I think that warrants it being listed. I like to use the "image" button for this; I find that it gives a really good feel for what to expect from a place.

sdrothrock 11y ago
I actually went back to look again after you mentioned the radius and noticed that the site tags my number one hit as a bakery when it's actually a store that just sells snacks. (Think mini bags of potato chips, candy, etc. Grocery store stuff.) I guess the problem with this area in particular is that the people who rate things on Google tend to be tourists and not people who live/work here, so the ratings tend to skew high on tourist attractions rather than places that are actually good to eat at. (If you were curious, the second result was the AKB48 cafe in Akihabara.) Design-wise, I never would have thought to look for a radius setting under the location menu. Playing with it didn't help much; I think it's just a problem with people in Japan not rating things on Google. Oh, well!

helb 11y ago

In my location, there's a beer pub with no meals at the third place and a whorehouse on the 4th. Maybe it would be useful – and probably easy – to at least enable filtering by these tags ("restaurant", "bar" etc.) on the right.