A review of Google Reviews

Storytelling of a different kind

Google Reviews. They’re not something I had ever thought about that deeply, but I often refer to them to make decisions. I have especially relied on them while travelling. I’ve occasionally left a Google Review if I had an excellent experience, or a particularly bad one, or sometimes if the staff were nice and asked me to. In this day and age Google Reviews are such a helpful way to find out if a place is worth your time and money. They can also be extremely detrimental to a business. Too many bad reviews and customers will stop coming. Even one bad review for a place can shape my opinion before I’ve even been there.

I recently read this incredible Longreads piece ‘The Strangely Beautiful Experience of Google Reviews’ and it got me thinking more about Google Reviews and the stories they tell.

It wasn’t until later that I realized I spent more time reading the reviews of places — wondering about the people who’d come before me, reconstructing a story from their lives across a two-dimensional landscape — than looking at the map itself. It’s like glancing into apartment windows as you drive down the highway, and feeling that strange and fleeting connection to other people on earth.

It’s interesting how much value we place on reviews left by people we don’t know about places we’ve never been to. They really are a pivotal tool for businesses and places in this day and age. The only issue is that Google Reviews are rarely objective.

Describing the world on a five-star scale creates a binary where the vast majority of reviews are either overwhelmingly positive or negative. (A lot of bad reviews are really just stories of people having a bad day.)

In my past year of travel, I’ve also discovered troll Google Reviews. While visiting São Miguel in the Azores, I was searching on Google Maps for “attractions” and discovered a pin labelled “Plant growing on dead tree”. It had 99 reviews at the time and a 4.8-star rating. I decided to delve more into the reviews to discover what this seemingly underwhelming “attraction” was. What I discovered was a hilarious group effort from almost 100 people to leave wholly positive reviews for a tree with a plant growing out of it. Not one single person had left a review saying anything negative or questioning the positive reviews.

I tried Googling and looking on Reddit for an explanation for this strange phenomenon but couldn’t find anything. It seemed to just be a collective effort from people on the internet to make fun of the concept of Google Reviews. I was fascinated by this and decided I had to visit this tree. And visiting the tree was honestly so fun. Not because it was an amazing tree, in fact, it was so completely ordinary, but going to visit it to join in on the troll reviews made me feel a part of something. The best part was that this type of trolling was completely harmless. It wasn’t a business or somewhere that could be impacted by a Google Review. It was a tree.

A photo I took for my Google Review of ‘Plant growing on dead tree’

This experience really had me thinking more about Google Reviews in a way that I hadn’t before. I love how they can tell a story in their own little way, whether it be good or bad or just a total joke shared between strangers on the internet. After reading the aforementioned Longreads piece, I decided to share my own experiences more through Google Reviews as a form of storytelling. That brings me to last week. Last week I spent 4-days in Edinburgh and decided to leave a Google Review everywhere I went. I wanted to leave Google Reviews for all the main attractions but also for all the not-so-obvious-to-leave-Google-Reviews-for places. Now, I’ve only included a handful of the reviews I left (otherwise this newsletter would be a mile long), some are very short, and others are much longer and detailed. I also had almost entirely positive experiences everywhere I went, so there are no bad reviews. I was weirdly disappointed by this because writing a bad review is the best kind to write. I feel like people enjoy writing a bad review because it helps get your anger or frustration out if you had a bad experience somewhere. It’s much easier to leave a review for somewhere you really hated than it is for somewhere that was just fine. I also think people love to read bad reviews because it helps them rule out a place or even validate their won feelings if they had a bad experience somewhere and didn’t check the reviews beforehand. Anyway, please enjoy a few of the reviews I left for places, experiences and food I had during my trip to Edinburgh.

ScotRail

The Booking Office

Greenside Cemetery

Greggs

Princes St Gardens & Dean Village

ASDA Cafe

Forth Road Bridge

The Black Bull Pub

These were just some of my reviews from my trip. While they don’t feel like they serve much purpose, I think Google Reviews are an important part of the zeitgeist at the moment. People from all over the world, from all walks of life leave Google Reviews every day for so many different places and experiences. They convey a moment in time. They can often be trivial but sometimes they can hold a lot of power. Most importantly though, I love the stories they tell.