The crowdsourced photos make the app’s functionality more similar to Yelp.

Why hire a professional food photographer when diners do it for free? Endgadget reports that several web surfers have spotted a new Google Maps update in the form of a tab on the “Menu” page that highlights “Popular dishes” described as “What people are ordering, based on photos and reviews.”

Endgadget points out the crowdsourced photos seem to scan online reviews to sort out the most frequently posted dish names, adding photos included with those reviews to the tab either automatically or by developers. Endgadget notes that several food photos on the Popular tab are the result of captionless original posts, which could cause some drooling diners to flash the photos to their wait staff instead of ordering them by name.

“The update to Maps has only been rolled out to some phones at the time of writing, and is most likely in testing,” writes Endgadget. “If it works well, we'll likely see it on the main Maps app before long, bringing Google Maps one step closer to its restaurant review rivals Yelp and TripAdvisor.”

For context, the "Menu" tab is sandwiched between “Overview” and “Reviews”; the long-existing crowdsourced “Photos” section remains separate.

Read the full article here.