Garbage In, Garbage Out: Why Scraping Doesn't Work for Local Search

Re: Garbage In, Garbage Out: Why Scraping Doesn't Work for L... by jshen on Tuesday July 14, 2009 @11:46AM (#703904)

There will always be garbage in. you're algorithms have to overcome this for the most part. Some things have to be manually dealt with and some things could be manually dealt with, but it's impossible to manually verify tens of millions of local listings.

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Re: Garbage In, Garbage Out: Why Scraping Doesn't Work for L... by jack_deneut on Tuesday July 14, 2009 @01:37PM (#704166)

That was the point of the post. Without some manual oversight of every new listing, too many errors will creep in to make the database truly useful.

Local search is not like general text search, where one expects that many of the results returned are not relevant, are wrong, are spam, etc. and can be ignored. Having the incorrect address or phone number for a business on a local search site is a major irritant to the user, and will quickly erode one's user base.

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Re: Garbage In, Garbage Out: Why Scraping Doesn't Work for L... by jshen on Tuesday July 14, 2009 @02:19PM (#704273)

I think you missed my point. Manual oversight of tens of millions of listings is not remotely practical. The article points out bad data in google, and it hasn't eroded their user base ;) Don't you think there is a reason google hasn't manually reviewed each listing?

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Re: Garbage In, Garbage Out: Why Scraping Doesn't Work for L... by tokenadult on Tuesday July 14, 2009 @02:31PM (#704303)

The article points out bad data in google, and it hasn't eroded their user base ;)

I don't trust Google at all for local information. I use social networks and ask my local friends rather than Google when I'm looking for a restaurant or other business in my town.

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Re: Garbage In, Garbage Out: Why Scraping Doesn't Work for L... by jshen on Tuesday July 14, 2009 @02:54PM (#704352)

apples and oranges

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