[HN Gopher] How Google Maps allocates survival across London's r...
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How Google Maps allocates survival across London's restaurants
Author : justincormack
Score : 61 points
Date : 2025-12-09 10:20 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (laurenleek.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (laurenleek.substack.com)
| x0x0 wrote:
| Interesting 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 wrote:
| Where 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| It'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 wrote:
| A 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.
| asdff wrote:
| Uhh, I want a list of all the results. I want to be able to
| search comprehensively within my map viewer frame.
| conartist6 wrote:
| The other commenter thought the work was silly, but I think it's
| brilliant. Keep at this!! You're making me hungry :)
| zem wrote:
| super interesting project. I would love to generate a similar
| list for my own neighbourhood
| digitalPhonix wrote:
| Yeah!
|
| > "I scraped every single restaurant in Greater London"
|
| How hard is that now? I assumed that Google is very protective
| of that data
| Bowes-Lyon wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| Same here!
| sinuhe69 wrote:
| Very 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 wrote:
| The writer is in London where even locals often eat outside
| their immediate neighborhood.
| asdff wrote:
| Depends 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.
| tokioyoyo wrote:
| Yeah, can't comment about London, as I've only been a tourist
| there, but assuming it works like in Tokyo. In a big city, with
| basically unlimited amount of dining options, a lot of people
| will try different places. In the past year, I don't think I've
| repeated a single dinner spot more than 3 time, and I basically
| eat out every day. This is always a discovery problem, and word
| of mouth/google maps/tabelog/etc. is a major sales driver here.
|
| Now, if I think about the time I lived in Vancouver, it was the
| opposite. You don't have that many options, after a while you
| basically make a list of your favourites and rotate.
| Bjartr wrote:
| Unless, as a local looking for new spots to try, your first
| step is going to Google Map and searching "restaurants". I'm
| certainly guilty of this sometimes.
| dzdt wrote:
| Google 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.
| monerozcash wrote:
| At 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.
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