How Google Maps quietly allocates survival across London's restaurants - and how I built a dashboard to see through it

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 07:37:00 -0400

Lauren Leek, Lauren's data Substack, Dec 18, 2025

The purpose of a ranking system is often to create a market rather than to merely describe it (fans of university rankings take note). This is brilliantly demonstrated in this report showing how a Google Maps depiction of restaurant popularity quietly tips the scales in the direction of "relevance, distance, and prominence." It's this third that is more interesting here (since, again, it features so heavily in university rankings). "In the language of digital economics, ranking algorithms act as attention allocators, steering demand toward some firms and away from others."