Stop screenscraping our menu!

July 21, 2011 11:01 AM

How can I fix incorrect restaurant menu information on 3rd party sites (i.e. allmenus, etc)?

A number of these sites (including some local sites, other online menu listings) have clearly screen scraped our page. Now they have menus up that have incorrect prices, items we no longer have, etc. We get the irritated calls from guests about it who blame us.

I know companies like UBL and LocalEZE will deal with listings for location, phone number, etc but upon talking to them it doesn't seem like they handle this issue. I have spent about an hour and my google fu has failed me completely.

Any suggestions?

posted by UMDirector to food & drink (3 answers total)

From Allmenus.com:

How can I update my menu?
Please fax menu changes to [phone] or email to [e-mail]. All menu updates will be administered in the order that they are received. Please allow up to 48 hours for any menu changes to be made. For minor menu changes or to confirm that we received your changes call us at [phone].

There are similar pages for most of those other sites. You'll have to visit each site, go to the bottom of each homepage and click on one of the tiny links that are usually there. Try 'Contact Us' (they'll have a bunch of links to FAQs and help stuff there to deflect you from calling) or 'Restaurant Owners'. Follow listed directions for updating menus. That should work.

Sounds tedius. There's always MeFi Jobs or Mechanical Turk or whatever.
posted by carsonb at 11:28 AM on July 21, 2011

That's what I don't have time for that tedium. There has got to be a company that handles that. There are so many of these companies, even finding them all is time consuming.
posted by UMDirector at 1:40 PM on July 21, 2011

UMDirector: "That's what I don't have time for that tedium. There has got to be a company that handles that. There are so many of these companies, even finding them all is time consuming."

Hire a high school student at minimum wage to do it?
posted by IndigoRain at 8:02 PM on July 21, 2011