August Update: Closed Venues, Negative Tags & Shareable Map Views

This month's about being more precise with what we tell you: what's actually closed, what a tag really means, and making it easier to point someone at exactly what you're looking at.

Marking venues permanently closed

Closed venues now show up with a red marker and a "Permanently closed" notice, so you know not to turn up. A new business taking over a spot gets its own fresh listing. Closed venues drop off the map after six months, but their history sticks around.

Negative tags

Tags on the map used to mean one of two things: a venue has it, or we don't know. Now some tags can mean a third thing: we checked, and it definitely doesn't. You'll see this as a red, struck-through chip on a venue page, like "No Wheelchair Access", so you know it's been confirmed rather than just missing.

Only a handful of tags support this so far. The "Suggest venue edits" form lets you propose one too, and the map itself now leaves these out of a venue's tag list, icon, and filter counts, rather than showing it as if the venue had the tag.

Shareable map views

Pan, zoom, and filter the map, and the address bar now keeps up. Whatever's on screen is baked into the URL, so a link you send someone shows them the same view. There's also a Copy link to this view button in the filters panel if you'd rather not rely on the address bar.

Help us shape user reviews

We're building proper user reviews next, and we want the questions to actually measure how good a place is, not just whether it's your kind of place. The Review Question Lab is a quick experiment: read a short scenario, answer a few questions, done in a minute, no sign-in needed.

Have a go

Every response helps us land on the wording that goes into the real thing.

Little things

• "Sign in" is now "Register free" so it's clearer new visitors can create an account, not just sign back in.
• Map markers are properly named for screen readers.
• The filters panel and map controls now use markup that assistive tech can actually announce.
• Clicking a cluster that can't zoom in any further no longer fans the venues out. It just does nothing, as it should.

What's next

• More negative-tag coverage, and a way to filter the map by them.
• Keep chipping away at page speed.
• Filling in more review scores and menu prices as we go.

---

Full changelog:

/documentation-viewer#CHANGELOG

Thanks for being here. Charlie