When you’re looking for a place to eat or shop, you might turn to Google to see what its users have said in their reviews of that particular restaurant or store.
But would you ever think to do the same for a park, or an ATM, or a cemetery?
Almost anything you can click on in Google Maps can be reviewed. (Until recently, you could even review entire continents.)
Even within Waterloo Region, local landmarks are racking up hundreds of reviews, painting a fascinating portrait of what people think about public amenities.
Waterloo Park scores high, with 4.4 stars. Its top review is an anonymous one which, in 13 words, praises the food twice and suggests the park “should buy freezies since cheaper.” (Whether people looking up Waterloo Park want to know about its culinary offerings is another matter entirely.)
Kitchener’s Victoria Park has 4.6 stars. There’s a separate entry for the clock tower – known to Google as the Dome of the Old City Hall Building.
You can also review individual parking lots and bus stops. The Grand River Transit stop on the south side of Bleams Road, just east of Homer Watson Boulevard, has one five-star review. Meanwhile, the stop on Hespeler Road north of Munch Avenue has four stars. It’s not clear what’s so great about Bleams, or what the stop on Hespeler could apparently be doing better.
Judging by their comments, reviewers love Mount Hope Cemetery – just not for anything having to do with its main purpose as a final resting place for loved ones.
Most reviews of Kitchener City Hall, on the other hand, focus on the building itself, with many people talking up the variety of events held there. (Carl Zehr Square, where many of these events actually take place, has only one review.)
While the common wisdom is that people are more likely to leave reviews when they’re unhappy, the ratings of Waterloo Region landmarks don’t bear this theory out. It’s rare to find anything receiving fewer than four stars.
Five-star ratings are more rare, and typically found in places few people have been reviewed. Until recently, the Bitcoin ATM inside a bar at King Street and Bridgeport Road had five stars based on four reviews. (Two subsequent one-star reviews dragged its average down to 3.7 stars.)
For an actual perfect score now, it’s hard to find anything that comes closer than the Cambridge to Paris Rail Trail.
Public-sector services and organizations often receive a disproportionate number of one-star reviews. While that helps explain the overall rating for Waterloo Regional Police (at least based on reviews of the Central Division in Kitchener), the first review to pop up is a bit more of a headscratcher.
Speaking of headscratchers, we’re not sure exactly what a reviewer would be looking for in a bridge – but if you’re curious, the Freeport Bridge and Bridgeport Bridge each have one five-star review (from the same person), while the 117 reviews of the West Montrose Covered Bridge, also known as the Kissing Bridge, average out to a 4.4.
And of course, CTV Kitchener has caught the interest of a few reviewers as well, with comments ranging from the positive to the negative to the factual.
Yes we do, reviewer #2. Yes we do.
