Zena.food: I Used Machine Learning to Find Genoa’s Hidden Restaurant Gems

There is an article by Lauren Leek called How Google Maps quietly allocates survival across London’s restaurants. I read it eight months after moving to Genoa and could not put it down. The premise is precise and a little uncomfortable: the way Google Maps ranks restaurants has almost nothing to do with food quality. It is about algorithmic prominence, a composite of review count, review velocity, web presence, and interaction signals. Venues that accumulate more reviews rank higher. Higher rank brings more visitors. More visitors bring more reviews. The loop does not care whether the food is good.