tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6569681.post112372618630747527..comments2024-03-29T05:14:10.903-07:00Comments on Geeking with Greg: Mining the peanut galleryGreg Lindenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09216403000599463072noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6569681.post-1123879630199933652005-08-12T13:47:00.000-07:002005-08-12T13:47:00.000-07:00I'm sure you're right -- Google's probably using t...I'm sure you're right -- Google's probably using the star ratings to summarize movie reviews.<BR/><BR/>And they may be doing something similar with restaurant reviews, but it's not quite as obvious. If you search for this <A HREF="http://local.google.com/local?q=sushi&hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&near=san+francisco,+ca&sc=1&start=10&sa=N&latlng=37775000,-122418333,9170532473060526063&radius=0.000000&reviews=1" REL="nofollow">sushi place</A>, Google grades each review with a green/yellow/red traffic light -- but some of the reviews don't have a star rating, or if they do, they don't correspond to Google's traffic light.<BR/><BR/>Granted, it looks pretty simple, but there might be a little semantic magic behind the review summaries.<BR/><BR/>In any event, these unfiltered reviews are much more useful to me than bought-and-paid-for recommendations. I look forward to seeing more structured mining of the peanut gallery.mbhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01888886220370104819noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6569681.post-1123823593793249362005-08-11T22:13:00.000-07:002005-08-11T22:13:00.000-07:00Thanks, Mahlon. That's a great point.I think the ...Thanks, Mahlon. That's a great point.<BR/><BR/>I think the current movie search implementation is probably fairly simple -- just averaging star ratings for reviews that have them -- but you're absolutely right that it's an interesting first step.<BR/><BR/>Thanks again for pointing it out.Greg Lindenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09216403000599463072noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6569681.post-1123822248848590432005-08-11T21:50:00.000-07:002005-08-11T21:50:00.000-07:00I thought Google was doing something like this alr...I thought Google was doing something like this already with their movie search. Search for "movie: ishtar" and you'll see that Google's calculated an average rating of 1.5 out of 5. Search for "movie: gandhi" and you'll get 4.3 out of 5.<BR/><BR/>Movie ratings may be more structured than other reviews because the critic often gives stars or thumbs-up or something -- but if Google's not having humans summarize the reviews, then they must employ some kind of "fuzzy semantic typing" to make sense of it all.<BR/><BR/>There are other hints as well -- Google's internally-developed language translation (not yet available to the public), local search results with traffic-light ratings of restaurants, etc.mbhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01888886220370104819noreply@blogger.com