Lately, I’ve been slightly obsessed with maps.
It’s not a wistful nerd fixation, either—I promise. (Though I certainly do have my fair share of those!) Nope: This obsession is all about practical benefit and some splendid ways our modern mapping technology can help us.
We’ve talked about little-known map-centric tricks in my Android Intelligence newsletter a few times recently, including with a standout reader-submitted tip about smarter, more advanced location sharing within the service.
But today I want to go a bit broader and show you a really cool tool I stumbled onto that takes some of the best bits of Google Maps and remixes ’em into an even more useful form.
It’s a resource you’ll almost certainly appreciate, no matter what kind of phone or computer you prefer or how much you’re obsessing over maps at the moment. And it couldn’t be much easier to use.
Psst: If you love these types of tools as much as I do, check out my free Cool Tools newsletter from The Intelligence. You’ll be the first to find all sorts of simple tech treasures!
Google Maps, reimagined
For a quick bit of context, the timing of this tool’s appearance on my metaphorical radar was almost uncanny.
After all the aforementioned Maps chat as of late, I was just in the midst of a chat with one of our Intelligence Insiders about how helpful of a discovery tool Google Maps has become.
That person pointed out to me how he now turns to Google Maps instead of regular search when he’s looking for a restaurant or another place of interest—because within Maps, whether you’re gazing upon it from a phone or a computer, you can see all sorts of pertinent info about virtually any place, anywhere. And the info is actually succinct and reliable.
It includes basics like the business’s hours of operation, busiest days and times, and even a menu (when relevant). But most helpful are the reviews.
And that’s where today’s Cool Tool comes into play.
➜ It’s a purely web-based resource called, rather fittingly, Top-Rated.online—or just Top Rated for short.
⌚ It’ll take you all of seven seconds to start using, though fair warning: You will likely spend many more moments exploring it over time.
The concept behind the site is simple: You plug in the name of any city, anywhere, and Top Rated then pulls in, processes, and organizes publicly available Maps data around the most favorably reviewed places in that locale. It then presents all of that info in a way that’s easy and even enjoyable to ingest.
Here, for example, is what comes up when I search for the best places in Kansas City:
As you can see, it’s a bit of a mishmash to start—with a mix of every possible public place thrown in and jumbled together.
Where Top Rated really gets useful is when you use the category options to drill down into more specific terrain, like restaurants within your selected area.
From there, you can get even more specific and pick a particular type of restaurant (or a more specific subcategory within any other designation). And when you click or tap on any individual place in the results, you’ll see a handy summarization screen that shows you key info about the establishment along with an AI-aided overview of the business’s key details and review trends over time.
Top Rated has all sorts of options for refining your searches and focusing on factors like overall ratings, hidden gems, or even recent discoveries for any given area. It really takes all the best parts of the Google Maps discovery process and reimagines them to create an even more effective all-around experience.
- Top Rated is completely web-based and available to use in any browser, on any device.
- The site is free and ad-supported.
- And it doesn’t require any sign-ins or the sharing of any sort of personal info.
No matter where you are, this is one Cool Tool well worth hanging on to and keeping in your virtual tool kit for the next time you’re craving something new.
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