41–50 of 74 posts
How do you handle conflicting signals? E.g., a business shows as open on Google, closed on Yelp, and the website returns a 404. Is there a confidence score in the API response or is it binary (exists/doesn't)
Interesting approach. The annual churn stat seems brutal, I imagine that gets worse in certain categories (restaurants, pop-ups, seasonal businesses). How do you handle conflicting signals? E.g., a business shows as open on Google, closed on Yelp, and the website returns a 404. Is there a confidence score in the API response or is it binary (exists/doesn't)
Interesting approach. The annual churn stat seems brutal, I imagine that gets worse in certain categories (restaurants, pop-ups, seasonal businesses). How do you handle conflicting signals? E.g., a business shows as open on Google, closed on Yelp, and the website returns a 404. Is there a confidence score in the API response or is it binary (exists/doesn't)
We have models which take all of this into account when producing the verdict. For enterprise clients we emit a calibrated confidence score. With public api we decided to start simpler. Also, we are not using Google data. I’m not a lawyer, but doing that for any maps-related company is simply against Google’s terms of use
We work in this space and have found that, very often, the realities on the ground do not match the digital information, especially when it comes to geospatial data, where businesses exist, what businesses actually exist, and their status. At Rwazi, we have millions of users helping collect on-the-ground data.
I'm a little underwhelmed by the api, it tells me if the business exists and is open, which is a tiny subset of what google places can tell me.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We have models which take all of this into account when producing the verdict. For enterprise clients we emit a calibrated confidence score. With public api we decided to start simpler. Also, we are not using Google data. I’m not a lawyer, but doing that for any maps-related company is simply against Google’s terms of use
FWIW it may be legal to break terms of use
I'm a little underwhelmed by the api, it tells me if the business exists and is open, which is a tiny subset of what google places can tell me.
Fair point - one doesn't instantaneously dethrone Google three months after starting. Here are some benefits of our API. Google's api is recall focused as any search - it shows you all possible places even if that one you are looking for doesn't exists. It is your job to find out if any of the returned results match the one you were looking for. Also, we have more convenient terms of use - you don't have to delete da…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fair point - one doesn't instantaneously dethrone Google three months after starting. Here are some benefits of our API. Google's api is recall focused as any search - it shows you all possible places even if that one you are looking for doesn't exists. It is your job to find out if any of the returned results match the one you were looking for. Also, we have more convenient terms of use - you don't have to delete da…
Aren't you just scraping Google's data though? Also I looked up a place that doesn't exist and it responded with: "existence_status":"not_exists","open_closed_status":"open"
open_closed_status is an indicator showing if there are sufficient evidences of the closure. If place doesn't exist, then there are likely no evidence of anything related to it, including closure. It could be confusing, but we will iterate on that.