Google Maps feature helps find the best food on the menu

For quite some time now, Google has been trying to turn Google Maps into more than it is. Yes, Maps is a great navigation tool and Google continues to add new features to help it do this job better. Google, however, is also trying to turn Maps into an interactive business directory. It’s now the place you go when you’re thinking of trying a new restaurant or need a particular company that will provide a particular service.

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In this respect, we’ve recently seen Google adding hashtags to user reviews to help you find the types of company you’re looking for more easily. They’ve also added messaging to help you talk to the companies once you’ve found them. Google is now adding another restaurant-focused feature to Maps that will help you decide which restaurant you’ll end up eating.

Google Maps will now show a restaurant’s most popular dishes

The new popular dishes feature coming to Google Maps is powered by Google’s machine learning algorithms. It is very similar to a new feature that has just landed on Google Lens, too. The algorithm will match user reviews and photographs on a per restaurant basis.

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This means that whenever you tap a restaurant in Google Maps, you’ll be able to see which dishes are most popular with other Google users. You’ll even get to see what they look like if other users have posted photos. There’ll also be quick one-tap access to user reviews for the dishes you’re thinking about ordering.

How does it work?

As with a lot of Google features, however, this wouldn’t be possible without user participation. Google was keen to point this out in the blog post published to announce its new dish-cover feature.

“At the end of the day, this feature is made possible because of contributions from people around the world who want to help others using Google Maps. So, if you want to pay it forward to the next diner, simply take a photo of your meal (before you’ve scarfed it down!) and add a dish name so others can know what’s good on the menu,” according to the article.

If Google can persuade more users to upload their food photos to Maps rather than Instagram, it’d go a long way to establishing Maps as the go-to business directory Google wants it to be. This would leave apps like Yelp in the dust.

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Google points out that the new popular dishes feature is rolling out to Google Maps users on Android right now and will be coming to iOS users in the coming months.