Yesterday we told you how Bloomington 3D came together in two days. Today was about everything behind it: the business directory. We rewrote hundreds of listings from sourced facts, rebuilt the category system so businesses are where you would look for them, added a way to see what is popular, and tuned the map so it follows the new categories. Here is what changed and why.
Why we started with the directory
Bloomington 3D shows every business in our directory on its building. That made the weak spots obvious. Many listings had a one-line description copied from an import. Some businesses had closed. Some websites had been taken over by spam. And the same restaurant could sit in four overlapping categories, so you could not tell where to look for pizza, or sushi, or a coffee shop that also bakes.
So today we did a cleanup, in four parts.
1. Food listings, rewritten from sources
The food and drink listings came first. For each of the 480 listings, we researched the business from its own website, its social pages, local news and guides. Then we wrote a new short description and a fuller write-up, fixed the categories, and added photos and logos where we could find them.
One rule made this safe: every fact in a description had to come with a source link and the exact words from that page, and a script then re-opened each page to confirm the words were really there. A sentence that could not be confirmed stayed out. If a business could not be confirmed as open, we did not rewrite it.
The result: more than 250 listings were rewritten and are live. The ones we could not verify were held back and reviewed one by one. About fifty listings that were closed, duplicated or not really in Bloomington were removed or merged, and every old web address for a merged listing now sends you to the one that is left. We also cleared the website link on a handful of listings where the old site had been taken over by an unrelated spam or gambling page.
2. Categories that make sense
Under Restaurant there were 48 overlapping subcategories. We looked at how Visit Bloomington groups dining, how Yelp splits food from nightlife, and how our own listings had been tagged by several imports over the years. Then we reorganized: 16 groups, including American & Southern, Barbecue, Pizza, Breakfast & Brunch, Bakeries & Desserts, Coffee & Tea, Bars & Pubs, Breweries, Food Trucks, and one International Cuisine group that holds eight cuisines from Mexican and Latin American to Japanese & sushi.
Then we did the same for everything else. The non-food categories went from about 313 to about 145, grouped under nine sections. The big catch-all, Professional Services, held 275 listings from a single import, with banks, law firms, insurance agents and car dealers all mixed together. They now sit in their own categories. More than 700 listings moved to a better home, and the number of listings with no category at all dropped from 141 to 26.
Tags got the same treatment. There were about 2,500, and most were used once, or just repeated the category name. We cut them to about 1,400 and fixed the capitalization.
3. Category pages that help you choose
The category pages got a redesign too. Each now opens with a plain sentence about what is in it, subcategory chips, related categories and popular features such as Takeout, Online Ordering or Family-Owned. You can sort by A to Z, most viewed or recently verified, and long lists scroll without page buttons. A button on every category opens just those businesses on the 3D map.
4. What people love, and what is new
The footer now shows Most Loved Businesses and the newest businesses side by side, each with a photo or logo and its category, so a visit can start with what other people like. Listing cards also show a small visits count once a business has been looked at enough times for the number to mean something. Business owners get a traffic panel on their own listing that nobody else sees.
5. The map follows the new categories
The 3D map groups its businesses by category, so we updated it to match. The chips along the top, such as Bars & pubs, Japanese & sushi, Bakeries & desserts, Coffee, Pizza, Breweries and Food trucks, now follow the reorganized food categories. Tap one and the pins and a list appear. The search box also finds businesses by tag and category and shows the short description on each card.
A few other things landed on the map today:
- A Show where I am button, so you can find yourself in town. It uses your location only on your own device while you press it.
- Specials today: daily food and drink specials from a calendar we keep of Bloomington bars and restaurants.
- An Edible trees layer, built from the City and IU tree inventories after a reader pointed us to a community map of fruit and nut trees.
- Most loved lists, and hearts and stars on directory cards. Votes are checked by Cloudflare Turnstile so one person cannot pile on, but it stays easy to love your favorites.
6. Behind the scenes
Some of the work does not show on the page, but it is what makes the site findable.
- Search engines now get specific labels. A dentist is marked as a dentist and a hotel as a hotel, and the directory keeps those labels working after the category renames.
- Old addresses are redirected. Merged categories and tags, retired listings and old pages now send you to the closest live page instead of a dead end.
- Pages are faster. Google’s Lighthouse test scores the home page 98 for performance on a phone, up from the 70s and 80s, and 95 to 97 for accessibility.
- The new compact header puts a 3D Map button in the main menu.
We also added anonymous usage statistics to the map today, and this changes something we said yesterday. Bloomington 3D now uses Google Analytics to count what people tap, search for and share, so we can fix what is confusing and build what people use. It does not collect names or email addresses, and your saved places still stay on your own device. Our privacy policy explains how analytics are used.
The statistics already taught us something: about half of last month’s page views on the site were not people. They were automated bots, mostly in two short spikes in September. Knowing that makes every other number more honest.
How it was made
Like yesterday, this was a collaboration with AI. Several Claude Code agents worked side by side: one researching businesses, one reorganizing categories, one on the page design, one on analytics and redirects. Every change was saved with a backup first so that anything could be undone, and a person made the calls on anything uncertain. We got some things wrong along the way. The first time we nested the old categories under the ten top-level sections, we filed Aviation under Fitness. A day of looking at the live pages caught it, and it is fixed.
What is next
- Researching the listings we could not verify yet, and finishing the last unclassified restaurants.
- A short email digest of what is new and what is happening in town.
- A way for business owners to claim and complete their own listing.
- More of the 3D map: events, live weather and more guided tours.
Take a look around. Browse the new categories, open the map, and love a few favorites. If something is out of date or in the wrong place, use Flag this listing on any business card, or tell us. We read every one.
