Historically, the local search space was defined by aggregates of business listings purchased from companies whose original focus was various types of advertising and direct marketing. As the space has evolved, search engines have looked at ways to gather better data and, importantly, to merge different sources of data into a single unified view of the restaurant or business being indexed and served as the result of a query.
Consequently, when you see a details page - either on Google, Bing or some other search engine with a local search product - you are seeing information synthesized from multiple sources. Of course, these sources may differ in terms of their quality and, as a result, the values they provide for certain attributes.
When combining data from different sources, decisions have to be made as to firstly when to match (that is to say, assert that the data is about the same real world entity) and secondly how to merge (for example: should you take the phone number found in one source or another?).
This process - the conflation of data - is where you either succeed or fail.
Take this example from Google's local search product.
The entry is for a company called the West Seattle Blog - certainly one of the best hyperlocal blogs I've come across. This is clearly the identity of the corporation that publishes the popular hyperlocal blog covering news and events in the West Seattle neighborhood.
As the places page indicates it is an owner verified listing, which means that the business owner has confirmed and contributed some of the data.
However, because Google gets data from many sources, it has conflated these additional data sets with this authoritative listing. One of the local entities that it has conflated with the West Seattle Blog is the West Seattle Bowl - a bowling alley in the same neighborhood but at a different address. While it is easy to see how this has happened (the names are identical apart from a few difference between the words blog and bowl which could easily be accounted for by a typo on the part of either data provider) it is unusual in that the addresses of the entities and many of the other features conflict.
By adding the attributes of the two businesses together, we see that the hybrid entity has the categories
Again, due to the mashing together of the data, the images - for a blogging company - are actually those for the bowling alley. In addition, a search on Google for 'west seattle bowl' brings up this listing and no listing for the bowling alley per se.
Because Google's local search, like most local search companies, provides reviews for businesses, this search result contains snippets of text reviewing the company. But compounding the problems of mis-associating these two entities, because the blog itself posts reviews about other local businesses, these too have been associated with the Blog / Bowl informing the user of the great chinese food, etc.:
Another feature of this result is that there are links (listed under reviews) to articles in the Seattle PI (a local newspaper). I imagine these have come about due to the journalistic nature and linking of the West Seattle Blog. However, the article one immediately reaches via the Seattle PI link on the page is entitled Shooter in West Seattle slayings reportedly had mental problems - not exactly ideal copy for potential customers of a bowling alley in that neighborhood.
I certainly believe that the mining of web content and the inference performed on multiple signals of data are two crucial technologies in the local search space, and I have plenty of respect for what Google has achieved in these areas. However, this example (which I came across via some original local search I don't recall) just seemed like an amazing example of a mutated associated graph with interesting consequences worthy of sharing.
I didn't know about this (am falling behind on my ego-Googling for WSB mentions) till Ian from Portent Interactive/Conversation Marketing pointed it out on Twitter. This has been the bane of our existence for MONTHS and also a source of humor - if you had contacted us for a quick interview I could have given you many colorful comments. Yes, we have complained to Google. Repeatedly. They have not fixed it. So our phone rings often with "Can I reserve a lane?" or "Is it Ladies' Night?"
Through other Google quirks, we also get the occasional phone call for some other local businesses, since we have written extensively about almost everything in the neighborhood for the past five-plus years and we have Google's #1 ranking for the simple search phrase West Seattle. But nothing is as glaring as this ridiculous mashup, which in some iterations even has a review for a local medical marijuana dispensary.
If anyone knows how to get them to fix it for once and for all, we'd be thrilled. But in the meantime, we are polite to a fault when folks call. We are a 24/7 news operation and are used to answering our phone around the clock anyway! - Tracy @ WSB
Posted by: Westseattleblog | May 03, 2011 at 02:00 PM