AJ Kandy

everything in its right place.

1. mare 5.13.08 / 10am

   72!

   And I’m not even in the Plateau.

   (Will this high score fix my knee?)
2. Frank 5.13.08 / 1pm

   The house I grew up in got a score of 75 and our previous residence in Chicago got a 98. Though our place here only gets a 38. On the upside, my office gets a 68. Maybe I should install a bed.

   I’d venture a guess that addresses in the US will get higher scores since the places that add to the score are likely better documented.
3. zura 5.13.08 / 3pm

   Oh interesting, though I am a couple streets over I’m at 62/100.
4. ajkandy 5.13.08 / 3pm

   98? Wow. yeah, it’s hard to beat older cities for that. I agree, it’s likely language barrier issues that prevent proper classification for Montreal. I’d otherwise expect my hood to be in the 70s at least.
5. Blork 5.13.08 / 4pm

   Apparently not. Let me try again:

   You get what you pay for with free mashups like this. While I didn’t expect my ‘hood to score very highly, its ranking of 20/100 is misleading.

   The mashup missed a ton of stuff, including:

   - Two major grocery stores (Loblaw’s and Provigo)
   - A huge “natural products” store (Avril)
   - A depanneur that specializes in Quebec microbrews and imported beers
   - A cremerie that serves Coaticook ice cream
   - A cafe that pulls perhaps the best espresso on the south shore
   - An entire shopping center that has a Wal-mart (bleh, yet how could they miss it?) a Chez Cora, a Canadian Tire, and other such things
   - Several banks
   - An awesome park that has ski trails, tobogganing hill, and live deer roaming freely.

   All that, and more, is a few minutes’ walk from my house, yet none of it shows up on the mashup.
6. ajkandy 5.13.08 / 5pm

   It does seem that if the place in question has low or poor Googlerank, or no phone book / Yellow Pages listings, then they’re less likely to get indexed.

   There seem to be some lessons in ‘ambient findability’ here. I wonder how many ‘missing’ businesses were hoodwinked into having all-Flash websites or have old sites where the text is all image-based?

   There’s nothing wrong with having a basic ‘businesscard site’ — it just has to be properly indexable and have text that search engine spiders can classify.

   As to your neighborhood’s low score, I’m surprised that you are surprised. The immediate neighborhood for blocks around is solidly suburban single-family residential with a smattering of low-rise apartments, and it’s framed at the corner of two very wide and busy boulevards / highways.

   If they’re judging this by the 5-minute-walk-radius rule, i.e. approximately 3 football fields’ radius given a human average walking speed of 3mph, then there doesn’t seem to be very much in the way of commerce and services around your home, besides schools and parks.

   My neighborhood is somewhat similar (plus, it’s semi-industrial in bits) but it’s saved solely by all the businesses on Notre-Dame, for what it’s worth!
7. Blork 5.13.08 / 9pm

   Well, most of the stuff I list is less than a kilometre from Chez Nous, which I consider to be walkable. It’s true that the density is low here but my issue is with the fact that the mashup completely ignored all those businesses.

   Obviously it’s not on the same level as the Plateau or Mile-End, but the mashup was listing grocery stores 10 and 12 km away, but not the Provigo that’s a seven minute walk away. It was also listing cafes and restaurants that would take an hour to get to by bus, but not the one that’s half a km away! (It’s an independent, whereas the mashup sure snagged the Starbucks and Tim Hortonses.)
8. ajkandy 5.14.08 / 10am

   Hm! Well that I think falls under the limitations of where it’s pulling its data from. I guess you can’t believe everything you read on the Internets…or maybe Google needs to learn to read French to enhance its database of businesses up here.
9. mare 5.15.08 / 11pm

   Another problem is that Québec businesses often have a really bad web presence. Either they have no site at all or just a business card site with a PDF folder, only in French and made 6 years ago.
10. Cameron 5.20.08 / 12pm

    AJ, our old hood scores a 28..
11. ad 7.9.08 / 9am

    Whoo-hoo! 82/100!
    If it’s on the IntraWeb, it must be true.

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