CitySearch Reviews a Non-Existent Restaurant

CitySearch appears to be unique in their ability to review restaurants that don't actually exist.

Maintaining a national restaurant directory must be no easy task considering how many restaurants open and close every year in the United States. The churn leads to challenges.

In other cases, the data is just bad. Not out of date, but never right in the first place.

So, how do you deal with this?

1. Proactively look for problems in your data set.

2. Make it easy to for visitors to flag bad data.

3. Let visitors edit problems they encounter themselves.

Here's what not to do: Review restaurants that don't exist. For example, CitySearch has an incorrect listing for a coffee shop near my home. It didn't go out business. It never existed in the first place.

Why does CitySearch publish hours for this place?

More importantly, why is CitySearch giving this place 3.5 out of 5 stars?

A search for the non-existent address of 4306 E Lake St, Minneapolis, MN shows that CitySearch is not alone in their belief that this coffee shop exists. For example, Menuism has the non-existent Kick Start in their directory as well, but they haven't taken a stance on the quality of a non-existent restaurant.

A look through the other restaurant review and directory sites shows me that CitySearch is unique in their ability to review a non-existent restaurant.

Is this particular situation unique, or does a 3.5 rating from CitySearch actually mean that a place may or may not exist?

A coffee bar...it would have to be a mobile one since there is no building for that address.

The Craftsman is at 4300 and SuperAmerica at 4320 east lake, which means 4306 would be the patio of the Craftsman, eh?

This article is too funny. I'm still laughing very hard. City Search what happened to you old friend.

It's always tough to stay on top of every listing on a wide-scale user-contributed local listings site, but Menuism does offer the ability for users to flag restaurants as closed (or in this case non-existent). With the rate that restaurants close (especially in these economic times), I think it's best to call ahead to verify any online listing before making plans.

Well, if there was as Kick Start Coffee Bar it would most certainly be 3 and a half stars. The hours of operation and name alone are worth that! :-)

I just looked at your link and it seems like they've marked it closed. If it never existed I wonder how the hundreds of listings were populated all over the web. I did a simple Google search on the phone and found MANY listings for this place. I don't mean to negate your point but it must have existed at some point.

I agree City Search is not always the best resource. I have realized this and decided to start my own website restaurant guide for Palm Beach County Florida. Feel free to take a visit and let me know if it has more potential than city serach. You can bind the site at Best Palm Beach Restaurants

Comments

1. Posted by: Marna on February 15, 2009 10:51 AM:

I stopped trusting Citysearch in the late '90s when I saw that restaurants/firms could stuff the ballot box. I still use it as a resource, but always cross tab the data with real reviews on Yelp or other sites.

Maybe your neighborhood is infested with a lot of highly-regarded phantom establishments. OR... Citysearch cannot not be trusted!

Required fields marked with: *
Name*:

Email Address*:

URL:
Remember personal info?

Comments*:

HTML Tags you can use in your posts:
<b>Bold</b> = Bold
<i>Italicized</i> = Italicized
<a href="http://www.othersite.com">Link to Other Site</a> = Link to Other Site

Please keep comments on-topic. Contact authors or other commenters
directly for off-topic conversations.

Notify me of future comments via e-mail

Technology Evangelist Digest - Free Newsletter

Sign up for the free Technology Evangelist Digest to receive daily updates, editorials, and practical advice on emerging technology trends in hardware, software, webware, marketing and beyond.

Technology Evangelist Digest will keep you up to date on the technology trends that will help make you more productive and efficient both in business and your personal life.

Let's face it: If you made it to this line, you must have found something valuable on this page, right? Think about how cool it would be to have something free and interesting to read every day from Technology Evangelist by signing up today.

1. Fill in your email below,
2. Then click on the confirmation email you receive.
3. That's it. Your first Technology Evangelist Digest will arrive within 24 hours.