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Comment by changoplatanero | Hacker News Reader

I remember reading somewhere from someone on the google maps team that the most difficult challenge in maintaining google maps is keeping up to date and accurate information about the millions of small businesses in their map. Being able to trust the information about restaurants and businesses is why I use google maps.

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I've found recently that even in SF, google maps's small business data is out of date and untrustworthy. I can trust it to give me a phone number and sometimes the website, but the actual omnibox info is only useful for businesses that I know are really well trafficked by the younger demographic.

This isn't my experience with Google Maps. Particularly during the pandemic, a lot of businesses were bordered up but still ostensibly "in business", with signs on the doors saying they'd be back in a few months. Google Maps claimed these businesses were all open during their normal hours.

Fair enough, but in my experience in NYC Apple Maps was even worse at this.

Are they now robocalling the small businesses (and having the robots speak with the staff) in order to confirm their details? I had that impression from somewhere, but I don't know if it's right.

They developed an AI which can call and make reservations, change an appointment, etc (Google Duplex). The do use it for that purpose: https://support.google.com/business/answer/7690269?hl=en

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