[tasty_freeze]

No kidding. When I zoom in on a few square miles around my house and ask to see restaurants, it shows only a few of them even though there is plenty of space -- it isn't like it has to prune some to make it readable. I zoom in and some appear that weren't there before ... why? There was room to display it before I zoomed in. Gaaah!

[morganf]

Oh wow I always complain about this, I didn't realize other people were also so frustrated by this. Tons and tons of cafes by my house, but I zoom in with about a six block radius, where there are at least 20 cafes or cafe-restaurants there, and literally 1 or 2 come up.

[gwking]

The grocer on my block is so tiny that I hit the max zoom before it shows up. If you pan around fiddle I can occasionally get it to appear, but it effectively does not exist according to google maps.

[andreareina]

Not to mention that zooming in will make some listings disappear

[telchior]

Yeah I utterly despise using Google Maps now because of this. In my neighborhood, there are restaurants that will only appear at a very specific zoom level. Zoom in OR out and they'll disappear.

I see things when I'm out and about all the time that just never appear on Google Maps -- cafes for instance. You can search cafe, coffee, restaurant, etc and they won't appear. Search the exact name and it comes up with 300 reviews. Sometimes, they'll come up in general search in week 1, disappear in week 2, and reappear in week 3.

Google is not good at consumer software and not a responsible company in many ways; Maps really deserves to be replaced with something, but unfortunately there's no competitor to speak of. Apple Maps is nice but listings don't come up because they're literally not in the database.

[bell-cot]

I'd assume it's pruning to make only the best-paying (to Google) restaurants visible.

[pjc50]

This is to force you to use search rather than your eyes.