"The Serbian Crown closed its doors after nearly 40 years in the same location."
Oh sure... blame it on Google Maps telling people you aren't open on Sat, Sun, Mon. I guess your regulars, who you've built up over 40 years, don't know when you're open unless they look at Google maps. Even the owner himself says "If you’re going there, it’s because you’ve planned to go there."
I imagine his problem could be more accurately blamed on the decor (it looks hideous on the outside and that doesn't bode well for the inside) and the low quality of food being served (unless there are lion,kangaroo and bear farms in Virginia than that meat has probably been frozen).
With that being said, Google maps is far from perfect. They really should have a way for business owners that they list to be able to update their store information, especially for small businesses. How hard would it be to implement a callback system that allowed an owner to make simple updates to hours of business or to delete false/inaccurate listings? I guess they're too busy trying to find places in their code base to replace 'if' statements with bayesian filtering.
Demonstrating causation between a bad Google Maps listing and Serbian Crown’s decline is going to be hard, though. For one thing, the restaurant’s Yelp listing—also a big factor in choosing a dinner reservation—is packed with abysmal, almost frightening, reviews. And there are any number of reasons a restaurant—even an old, established one—can fail, as Google’s lawyers pointed out an angry June 17 motion to dismiss the lawsuit.
Writers rarely get to choose their own headlines. That's why it's quite common to find completely reasonable articles with extremely sensational headlines.
The article didn't discredit anything. The title is "How Google Map Hackers Can Destroy a Business at Will" not "How Google Map Hackers Destroyed Serbian Crown".
But the article didn't support the title. The title supported by the article could be "How Google Map Hackers Can Contribute To The Demise Of The Restaurant On A Downhill Trajectory". This is just one sensationalist title.
Why so much hate on the headline? The article itself is perfectly reasonable, so just read and digest that. It sounds like you want to just read the title and understand everything.
I used to be a copy editor, back in the day when newspapers had copy editors. One of the jobs of a copy editor back then was to write the headline, and write an accurate one. My chief editor was tough on me, too, and it was hard to come up with a good headline that fit the space and was accurate. She often changed just one word or tense and cleared things up, but now and then she'd can my headline entirely and rewrite it.
Today? Online news sites don't care about headline accuracy, just SEO and linkbait rating. They don't even really have to care about length, to an extent. "Subject That Will Blow Your Mind and Change the Way You See the World. Top All-time. You Won’t Believe Your Eyes. Watch."
Isn't the topic in this case supposedly "How Google Maps can Destroy a Business at Will"? A topic that isn't supported by the article content (as discussed upthread)? That seems pretty "useless" to me.
Because people get sick of misleading page titles. It is obvious that the title was chosen just to get you to the page. However, the implication of the title is that Google destroyed this business by listing its hours incorrectly. I agree with
vdaniuk, the article does not support the title assigned to it. There is substantial evidence to support the position that the restaurant died for reasons other than the incorrect listing of hours.
I realize people choose page titles that are meant to grab your attention, and I don't have a problem with that in general. It just gets tiresome when the article does not discuss what you were led to believe it was going to discuss.
So where's the evidence that Google Map Hackers Can Destroy A Business at Will? I can't find it in the article. Certainly the article lists a few tactics that have worked in the past, a few loopholes that have been closed, but all of these appear to, at worst, provide temporary inconveniences.
I've eaten Kangaroo in Cambridge and it tasted delicious, and I can assure you there are no Kangaroo farms around here - the fact the meat has been frozen is not the reason for them shutting. Any place that has been around for 40 years serving food has to be doing something right, they did win the "NVM Best Restaurant" award from 2006 to 2009. You also can't blame the decor on a huge, sudden drop in customers.
I would think that perhaps the hideous website[1] played a bigger role and perhaps didn't help the situation.
And I would not be surprised to learn there is some internet activism at play here too. Someone who doesn't think people should eat [this list of animals] because of [this reason] might see this place and think "oh, if I go to Yelp and leave bad reviews, this place will close, ha ha!"
They offer an easy way for business owners to update their information. It's not difficult at all, just have to order a confirmation code to a current business address and take some other verification steps, then you can modify your business page however you like.
If the business owner doesn't understand technology, contract it out.
They do have a system for the business to give feedback on the listing; it's even discussed in the article that the Serbian Crown eventually found a web consultant that helped them correct the listing. I have no idea if it is simple.
Each of Facebook, Google+, Yelp and Foursquare (and I'm sure lots of others, those are the ones I perceive as being 'big') have buttons that say something like 'Do you own this business?' (they disappear if/when the owner updates the listing). I sort of think these local business landing pages were one of the big reasons Google worked so hard to have their own Facebook (there are still an awful lot more businesses 'on Facebook' than are doing anything with Google+).
I've planned many times to go to somewhere while still having to GPS my way there, and if the food/decor are crap, I'd suspect that's not a sudden change after 40 years.
You might be getting downvoted for the snarky tone of the first paragraph, but I think you have a point. If you're a restaurant in business for 40 years, and you don't have enough regulars who would question Google Maps telling them that you're closed on the busiest nights of the week for the restaurant industry, then I think you have problems much deeper than anything that might be happening on Google Maps.
With that being said, Google maps is far from perfect. They really should have a way for business owners that they list to be able to update their store information, especially for small businesses. How hard would it be to implement a callback system that allowed an owner to make simple updates to hours of business or to delete false/inaccurate listings? I guess they're too busy trying to find places in their code base to replace 'if' statements with bayesian filtering.