the future of pubs galore

Seeing the post about BITE and how little reviews there are on it.I wonder what the future is for this site. I used to use Ratebeer many years ago but now its been decimated by Untappd where its far simpler to check and post which beer you have had.Their forum has virtually ground to a halt and wonder how long it can survive.I have always thought we need a facility where you can check which are the best pubs in an area on the click of a button rather than troll through the list to find a decent pub.Our forum is still just about hanging on with maybe 20 contributors but no new members posting.Is there a future for PUG or will Untappd ,What Pub and Facebook groups hasten the decline.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by london calling

Seeing the post about BITE and how little reviews there are on it.I wonder what the future is for this site. I used to use Ratebeer many years ago but now its been decimated by Untappd where its far simpler to check and post which beer you have had.Their forum has virtually ground to a halt and wonder how long it can survive.I have always thought we need a facility where you can check which are the best pubs in an area on the click of a button rather than troll through the list to find a decent pub.Our forum is still just about hanging on with maybe 20 contributors but no new members posting.Is there a future for PUG or will Untappd ,What Pub and Facebook groups hasten the decline.

---

I suspect What Pub may be the biggest threat but it is based on fairly ancient software called Pubzilla. They have recently vastly improved their Search function but I continue to use a combination of this site and the What Pub link. The sites are different as in theory What Pub provides objective views while this one has subjective views. You haven't mentioned Trip Advisor which I think should stick to restaurants and hotels.

I used to use a combination of WhatPub and BITE when looking for pubs in a certain area. WhatPub suits me as the information is pretty up to date, allows you to search for nearest pubs to a post code and easily apply filters (though annoyingly those filters sometimes reset when navigating between pubs). So I'd use WhatPub to find the pub and then look on BITE to see what kind of reviews it got. These days PUG has replaced the functionality of BITE for me, I still do my initial search on WhatPub and check the reviews on here. Normally the WhatPub write up is enough to make me decide if a pub is worth a visit, but the reviews here can be valuable too and I find it interesting to compare my experience of a pub with someone else's once I have visited.

I find the mobile version of PUG a little clunky. The "100 nearest pubs" feature is useful when out and about though, it would just be nice to filter that list by pub features like you can on WhatPub. If the nearest pubs feature, or a search in general, from the mobile site listed the pub features as part of the search results (one line underneath with abbreviations or symbols would suffice) and perhaps a drop down arrow next to it would show the latest review or two without navigating away from the search would be nice. Or at least showing the current average rating within the search results, so you are not clicking backwards and forwards to get more information.

Where PUG excels over WhatPub is that the opening hours are scraped from the pub's Facebook page (where available) which I find is usually more up to date than the WhatPub entry.

If there was a facility to search for a post code and PUG returns the nearest pubs in a list, that would be a great improvement. If it could then optionally show those on a map, that would be excellent. With a list if there are two pubs 0.5 miles away from your search, you have no idea if those pubs are almost next to each other or actually 0.5 miles in opposite directions from the search position. The ability to show results on a map is something that is lacking on WhatPub, so that would definitely give PUG an edge.

I use Untappd and I love it, but I consider that to be more about the beer than the pubs. You can find venues on it, and show them on a map, but it is a bit hit and miss in that respect so isn't somewhere I would go first in order to find a pub. I don't see Untappd as a direct threat to sites such as this.

With my knees being knackered I'm finding it difficult doing what most people would regard as a "crawl". I think PUG and What Pub compliment each other. I use PUG for general navigation and What Pub to get an idea of what beers may be available. What Pub write ups should be an objective picture of a pub while PUG ones are a personal opinion including potentially a score. Obviously if the reviewer thinks a pub is the best or worst they've ever seen then it must be justified. On a personal basis I find the different opinions, priorities as to what is important and scores fascinating. I've said it before and I'll say it again if we all agreed with each other it would be very boring. Anyone for a rerun of the Top 10 pubs next year with the proviso it must be a completely new set of pubs or maybe a 50/50 split?