So in the states, if you wanted to find a restaurant or a coffee shop or any type of local business, you could go to google maps and search for "coffee shop" or "electronics store" for example and the map would show you 95% of local businesses that fit that description in the area. Or you could use a different site such as yelp. You could also read reviews of such establishments on these sites.
It seems that neither google maps nor yelp are of much help here in Warsaw. There are loads of coffee shops in the city for example but on google maps the only ones showing up are the chains like green cafe nero and starbucks.
Is there a web site equivalent in Poland (or Warsaw specifically) that is popular and has a good listing of local businesses? It looks like zomato might be the closest for restaurants and cafes but I doubt that site reaches the 50% mark as a lot of existing coffee shops don't show up on their site.
So in short, I'm looking for a website with the following characteristics:
-a near complete accurate listing of all of the local businesses (restaurants, stores, tailors, bakeries, etc)
-user reviews
-a map view that displays business that fit your search terms
-free for public use
If it doesn't exist, I wonder why not? Is there so much turnover on business that the list was hard to keep up with?
There is Yelp in Poland: yelp.com/c/warszawa/food
Most restaurants have only one review, though, and I'm sure that lots of businesses are not listed.
And tons of "business directories" that have listings of most or all local business, though usually without any useful information besides, perhaps, an address. Actually, one of the biggest problems in looking up local businesses in Poland is sorting out all the useless "business directory" sites.
Part of the problem is Poland's incredibly strict privacy laws. Another, no doubt, is the libel/slander law, which is completely and utterly different that that in the US. Nobody wants to provide information that can get them in trouble with the law.
