The Restaurant Nearest Google
Jirapraphanan is exactly the kind of customer Thai Food Near Me hopes to scoop up. The New York-based restaurant is named after a literal Google search, betting it can bring in customers with the power of SEO — the practice of making a business, website, or content more findable in search engine results. The restaurant is optimized for the digital platforms diners use to find places nearby, not for the person walking past on the street or getting a recommendation from a friend.
Chicago Tribune (in 1992, via Hacker News):
Are you willing to trust your business correspondence to a firm listed in the telephone directory as “A AAA Aability Secretarial Service?” Trust your car registration to the ungrammatical “A Attorney for DMV Matters?” Open wide for someone listed anonymously as “A Business Person’s Dentist?”
There’s no reason not to, unless you object to business operators trying to get an alphabetical leg up on their competition.
Update (2023-11-20): Nick Heer:
Google says this strategy does not work, and my testing seems to confirm that. There is a chain of businesses in Calgary called “Towing Near Me”, but searching both Google and Google Maps for that exact phrase does not surface that business. Instead, I see towing companies with locations near my IP address in central Calgary, which is what I would expect.
