For my google maps project, I decided to use one of my own datasets that I have been collecting over the past 4 years. I am a pizza lover but also a very forgetful person, so I have been recording all of the new locations I go to and then a score out of 10. The other pizza specific detail that is important to note is that all of the scores I have recorded have only been with fresh pies, never deliver or over the counter individual slices.
The first thing I did with the map is enter every different location I have recorded, which was 20 locations. From there, I downloaded the dataset and then was able to enter in my scores for each respective location. I deemed all of the locations I rated 7.5 and up as desirable spots, so I adjusted the spread sheet and uploaded those locations as a new layer. Finally, I created a new layer with my top 5 locations.
Using this dataset was advantageous for two particular reasons. The first is that I already had data that communicated the quality of the pizza (my opinion). The second is that pizza is typically a geographically assed food. A lot of times, the geographic location will be a strong indicator of quality.
The other reason why I wanted to experiment with Pizza as a dataset is because the pizza industry is not dependent on the internet for success. There are certainly cases where restaurants and pizzerias use social media and forms of internet marketing for success, but a lot of locations rely on reputation and word of mouth. Using Moz explorer exposed this. All of the locations had websites but the majority of them did not have enough data or keywords for Moz to be able to display data.
One of the pizzeria location Johns of Bleeker Street in NYC is an internationally famous location, so they receive a lot on internet traffic to their website. To no surprise, Yelp and Trip Advisor are considered among the “top competitors” of https://johnsofbleecker.com/. The cites that historically drive the most traffic to the sight are articles from some of the largest news publications in the world. Different articles on the NY Times and The Washington Post drive significant traffic directly to their website.
It is likely unachievable for more local and lesser known places to get articles with that kind of reach to be written about their locations. However, it goes to show that it is important to have articles written about your location to drive traffic to your website. There is no need for national coverage for a local spot, if you can get in the papers of your town and the surrounding ones, it should drive sufficient and a competitive amount of traffic to your website and store.
The company I would recommend they partner with is an AI based location service Four Square. According to Moz, there are already links in between the two sites, so they may already do business together or Johns of Bleeker uses their platform. A pizza place with this kind of reputation does not necessarily need new ways to reach new customers or stay relevant, but delivering food to customers in terms of how they want to receive their food, will be a large part of any food business going forward.
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