sdsearch

I've noticed that in at least a couple programs the restaurant search page on the website was completely redesigned the other day.

It now has the map (permanently?) on the right, and a scrollable list of 10 restaurants at a time on the left.

(In the old format the map was optional.)

It also is now asking me whether I want to allow or block it sensing my location, but I haven't seen a way to search by "my current location" yet, but maybe that's coming?

DELee

Wow - finally tried the new format. That sucks.

It sorts automatically by "Recommendation" - whatever that is - instead of proximity to the point/zip/location you've searched on.

And I'd rather be able to pop open a separate window on each restaurant/dine location instead of having to click in and then back up.

No wonder my old Android phone was spitting up hair balls trying to access the mobile site.

If this keeps - as it probably unfortunately will - I'll probably be dropping out of all of these iDine things going forward.

#NotAFan

David

sdsearch

Actually, that's what the previous website for most airlines also defaulted to!

Recommendation is based on proximity to the location you've searched on, but is biased toward "full" members of RN.

Changing the sort to Distance makes it show all restaurants by distance, which in many places shows tons of online-ordering-only (ie, ChowNow-only) restaurants first and makes it harder to find "full" members of RN (if there are many more ChowNow-only locations near where you're searching than "full" RN locations).

"Full" member of RN, if you want to order pickup, you can order by phone and get miles on everything you pay. Online-ordering-only restaurants (ie, ChowNow-only), you only earn miles on the pre-tax per-tip total.

And, of course, if you're traveling, and looking for a place to get lunch in the middle of a road trip that day, you may want a restaurant where you can dine in, so you want to such restaurants listed first.

I agree that "Recommendation" is a confusing name, but I find what it does in practice very useful.

DELee

I recall entering a zip code and the site(s) would show a list of restaurants sorted by distance that centered at wherever the zip location was.

Now, if I enter a zip code or a city whether online or via a browser on a phone, I get restaurants that are "recommended" but nowhere near by.

As an example, for the DC area meetup, I'd entered Alexandria, VA to search on and I get results that are miles away from Old Town but are "recommended"

If I enter 22314 I get restaurants that are closer over on King Street but I cannot search on an intersection such as Braddock Road and West Street which is adjacent Braddock Street Metro Station.

David

sdsearch

Two (or more) search format changes ago, they had search by saved address, but then they got rid of it. I hated that (because I had a bunch of saved addresses for places I wanted to search near), but it's not a new loss, it was a couple years ago that they lost the ability to search by address.

The only thing new I can see that they added is to search by "Current Location" (which only works if you answered "Allow" to the popup asking if they can use your current location). That works even better than zip code if you do indeed want to search around your current location, but it's of course useless if you want to search around a different location than your current location.

Where they consider "Alexandria" to be within the city, and how they determine that, I don't know. It doesn't work well in any area that has many zip codes within a city, and has many restaurants within the city. I always search by zip code in such areas (if I can't use "Current Location" in this newest version of the search).

But did you try "Nearby"? My experience it that it doesn't change where it searches (compared to "Recommended"), it just prioritizes dine-in vs online-only restaurants differently. In my experience, using "Current Location", "Recommended" gives me the closest dine-in restaurants to my house on page 1, but the online-only restaurants even closer to my house many pages later. "Nearby" gives me the closest restaurants of either type on page 1, but since my closest restaurants with one exception are online-only (ie, ChowNow ordering only) restaurants, those are what "litters" by page 1 with "Nearby" selected.

You don't earn as many miles with online ordering as with dine in or phone ordering (because with online ordering through ChowNow, you only earn on the pre-tip pre-tax amount), so that's why usually prefer the "Recommended" search, but when I specifically do want to order pickup from someplace as nearby as possible, I then switch to "Nearby".

I don't notice any big difference in the zip code search between this version and the immediately preceding version (the previous version also gave lopsided results with zip codes that are strangely shaped), but I do notice that "Current Location" gives me better results (when I want restaurants around my current location) than the zip code ever did.

The problem is there is universally defined location for a zip code. Especially with zip codes that are strangely shaped, every search platform can give weird results, but each different search platform can give differently weird results.

So if you can use it, I find "Current Location" to be an improvement. But how zip codes worked always varied from one location to another (because of the arbitrary place the put the zip code "marker" within the zip code), and that in general hasn't changed, but in some places the zip code "marker" within the zip code may have changed. So maybe that changed for that zip code in Old Town Alexandria while it didn't seem to change for my home zip code or my work zip code here in SoCal very much. But it both places I can now use "Current Location", and that works may better than either the old or new zip code search.