Is G+ Local Sentiment Analysis Worth A Hang? Really?

[MiriamEllis]

I've always been intrigued by the sentiment snippets Google has been experimenting with for some time now. I'm referring to the At A Glance feature that takes up several pixels on G+ Local Pages. While this has been around for quite awhile, I have to day, I've never benefited from it (apart from the occasional laugh at a really bad set of words). Mostly, the snippets I see just don't add up to anything useful.

Here's an example from the + page of a fancy vegetarian restaurant in Mendocino, CA:

Ravens Restaurant - About - Google+

The At A Glance reads:

bananas foster ? dog friendly ? dining experiences ? scones ? waitstaff

I don't know about you, but this leaves me with this rather vague, odd collage in my mind of dogs eating bananas foster and scones and having dining experiences with waitstaff. I've been to this restaurant, and the above sentiment does virtually nothing to describe what it is actually like there.

So I'd like to ask you...do you find At A Glance to be a worthwhile pursuit on Google's part, a useful feature for you? If it is useful to you, can you cite examples in the wild that have helped you and explain how, exactly, they helped? To me, glancing at something like the above only creates confusion. What does it do for you? And what do you think it does for Google?

 

[Colan Nielsen]

Hi Miriam,

I'm in the same boat as you. I've always been really intrigued by the At A Glance feature. I've never found them to be of much use when trying to select a restaurant to go to or any business for that matter.

What's odd is that the Google Places Troubleshooter has an option to report the At A Glance features, yet Google has said that they can't manually edit them, as they are pulled in from the reviews and other sources.

 

[djbaxter]

I'm still chuckling at "dogs eating bananas foster and scones and having dining experiences with waitstaff"...

 

[Linda Buquet]

I'm still chuckling at "dogs eating bananas foster and scones and having dining experiences with waitstaff"...

You literally took the words right out of my mouth David. I was going to say that!
Sound like my kind of restaurant!

 

[MiriamEllis]

Thanks for the replies.

Maybe if Google could refine the app to pull adjectives only? So that you'd have things like 'excellent', 'crowded', 'pricey', it would have some value. As is, it looks like we are in agreement that it's just an odd duck of the Google family.