Tangential, but I discovered several years ago that even without overt ads in Google Maps, there was still something wrong. Search for “restaurants” and you get the same blend of corpo establishments no matter where you travel. Type in something specific like “arepas”, “korean bbq”, or “turkish food” and all of a sudden you get a list of options that is more diverse and still within the same zone as the generic search.
I don’t know why the ethnic options always get hidden by default and I hate it.
Tangential, but I discovered several years ago that even without overt ads in Google Maps, there was still something wrong. Search for “restaurants” and you get the same blend of corpo establishments no matter where you travel. Type in something specific like “arepas”, “korean bbq”, or “turkish food” and all of a sudden you get a list of options that is more diverse and still within the same zone as the generic search.
I don’t know why the ethnic options always get hidden by default and I hate it.
That’s not wrong, that’s working as expected. You didn’t think those companies paid Google to not advertise their business did you?
Because those are more popular. More people are interested in McDonald’s than in Lahmacun.
https://laurenleek.substack.com/p/how-google-maps-quietly-allocates