How should Yelp identify closed restaurants?

Clarification: Are concerned about restaurants that migh be closing temporarely due to vacation, renovations or just to let the crisis pass?

Ans: Let's assume we are only tackling restautant states "open" or "closed".

Goal: Reduce number of "ghost" restaurants on Yelp.

Problem: How to verify a restaurant's state: Open vs Closed.

Proposal:

Build an algorithm that takes in the following parameters:

1. Customer reports of restaurants closure

2. Date of most recent review

3. 3rd party data (e.g. Google Maps)

and create a logic that determines the restaurant's most likely state Open or Closed.

For instance: if the customer reports of closure reach a high threshold >X , the restaurant state is more likely "closed"

If customer reports of closure is very low
If customer reports are in an "uncertain" range [Y, X], then we need to check other parameters to decide the actual state: if most recent review is older than 3-6months, most likely the restautant is closed. Else, the restaurant is open - pending additional reports or checks (e.g. cross checking with 3rd party platforms like Google Maps).

We can incentive more crowsourcing of this information, to get more customer reports, by allocating points to these users, that they can convert into other benefits such as discounts on next restaurant reservation or order.