Google is proving the central limit theorem by catering to the average.
It's one of the things that has reduced the usefulness of these tools.
Your search - "abcdfksosifjdjwkdkwotmdnwkqk" - did not match any documents.
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“No results found on Google Maps
Try searching for something else or in a different area”
At least viewing the most recent comments and reading the comment that goes with it helps figuring out if it might be a decent place or not... at least sometimes.
But there's not really any alternative. Apple Maps can't show me things because it's missing the entries entirely. Yelp became useless years ago. I feel like we're going back in time because the best way to find local restaurants has become walking / driving around the neighborhood to see what's there, or getting word of mouth recommendations.
Search-based interfaces with ranking, controlled by someone else, are all screaming to be gamed and monetized. We should hate this but we don't.
Let's face it, that never stopped being the best way. There have always been problems with internet reviews, if only the ones inherent in the 1-5 star mechanism. But, it is very inconvenient to ask around for recommendations when you're (for example) hungry and passing through an unknown town or something. So I get why we need a source that isn't completely unreliable.
Often it’s a place a bit off the road or harder to find, but I’ve had as good luck or better vs the mapping tools.
I think they are trying to integrate their bard UI into search and it is killing the results.
At this point, I use google to search reddit in order to find organic results. Unfortunately, that will probably be taken over by spammers soon enough.
I'm grateful for places like Rumble and Twitter, where real news can be found. :)
And targets often have a Starbucks inside thier belly.
Google maps is still getting worse and worse though.
There's also a lot of brigading on Maps. You'll see 5 1-star reviews in a row, and realize they are either duplicate accounts or friends who are all reviewing the same experience.
For example some of my favorite Asian restaurants in the city are rated 3.5ish while Uber Eats is rated like 4.7. It leads me to believe a lot of people are rating Google Maps restaurants also based on service. One in particular
https://www.ubereats.com/ca/store/china-lan-lanzhou-beef-noo... (4.7)
https://goo.gl/maps/GnLmwJNRjBHP9UnN8 (3.9)
This place is awesome, and personally have experienced bad service but don't really care, so I do understand the Google Maps rating, but do find the whole rating system not helpful for me as I'm interested in good food and willing to accept bad service.
You're correct. This is a problem with ratings. You really have to read into them to see what they're complaining about or praising. This is true even for individual reviews, written solo. Many are unhelpful, or stuff that doesn't concern you.
One of the best examples I can remember is a venue that had 2-3 stars. However, all the negative reviews were like: "They have massive parties going hard late into the night... but my kids go to bed at 9:30, so 1 star".
If only. Its more like "these are the businesses that have paid me. They don't match what you want, but tough cookies."
Same with the much vaunted Amazon and Netflix recommendation engines. They stopped recommending stuff that you would like a long time ago, around the time everyone was trying to copy their recommendation engines, and started recommending stuff that makes the company more money.