Local Search as Told by a Cookie Monster

One day I was sitting at my desk and it occurred to me…I really want some cookies. The day prior, my boss told me about some amazing cookies, and since then, I couldn’t stop thinking about them. The problem was I didn’t remember the name of the place, and rather than admitting my cookie hunt was trumping real work, I consulted the omniscient iPhone. I had just downloaded the new Bing app on my iPhone (a sin, I know), but it said it had deals and such. The interface looked pretty flashy, so I thought I’d start there even though I typically live on Google Maps – I get lost a lot, okay.

Cookies Near Me

So I’m sitting at my desk trying to look like I’m working, but what I’m really thinking about are all of the redeeming qualities of the chocolate chip cookie. And I’m looking at my phone on the sly to try to figure out the name of this cookie place. First, I search “cookies near me”. Apparently Bing thinks Lakewood and Aurora is near downtown Denver. Instead I try “cookies Denver” and got much closer results. The first one that shows up is Santa Fe Cookie Company with a 4.5 star review (from Yelp), and I realized that was the one. Yay, it’s cookie time. I check out the listing because I heard that this place closes early. Thankfully, they had a complete listing with an address, hours of operation, reviews, images of delicious cookies (and cupcakes!), and a choice of how you wanted to get there (Apple Maps, Google Maps, Uber, Lyft). I’m not that lazy, so I choose Google Maps, finding it weird that I’m not automatically taken to Bing Maps for directions.

On my walk, I tried to look up the reviews to see what kind of cookies I should get. Well apparently Bing isn’t on the immersive search bus yet. They wanted me to download the Yelp app to look at reviews. Yea, right. Who has that kind of space on an iPhone? So I had to go all the way back one page and look at the Foursquare reviews. Who knew Foursquare was still a thing? OK, so maybe it isn’t because the most recent review I found was from 2014.

Back to Google

I switched over to trusty ol’ Google and found a number of helpful reviews. A perfect 5 stars and found out that it’s only $1 for 3 cookies! Can it get any better? Yes, it can. The pin was in the right place. I got to the store without getting lost, looking upstairs while it’s actually downstairs. And there were still cookies left!

I chose the peanut butter cookies and let me tell you, the 5 star reviews were well deserved.

Moral of the story: keep your listing updated so that you too can be found by cookie monsters and give all the info necessary to feed their habit. Photos, hours of operation, pin markers — they really do matter to the user on the other side of the screen. Had the pin marker been in the wrong place, or had there been a lack of pictures, it would have been easy to bail and go to the next place.