Alibaba's first step in-store: Amap creates a ranking list and rebuilds an offline credit system

After heavily investing in instant home delivery through Taobao Flash Purchase for 133 days, Alibaba has finally taken another step towards developing in-store business.

We have learned exclusively that on September 10, the anniversary of Alibaba, Amap announced the launch of the "Amap Street Ranking," which is mainly divided into three categories: food, hotels, and scenic spots, with a focus on offline dining merchants. Additionally, it includes some specialty food rankings, such as "Local Favorites," "Frequent Visits," and "Hidden Gems," covering more than 300 prefecture-level cities nationwide.

Currently, the most mature food rankings in the market are the Must-Eat List from Dianping and the Black Pearl Restaurant Guide. The benchmark for Amap's "Street Ranking" is evident. At this stage, Amap is only focusing on content and refining the rankings.

Alibaba Group CFO Xu Hong mentioned in an interview a few months ago that Alibaba plans to spend two to three years moving the service industry onto the platform, increasing their digital penetration rate to tap into a "new service industry e-commerce" market worth over ten trillion. According to our exclusive information, to capture such a market, Alibaba aims to build a large consumer platform centered around Taobao while also nurturing Amap to become an offline entry point comparable to Taobao.

We understand that this Amap ranking project does not involve Ele.me or Taobao Flash Purchase. However, how Ele.me and Taobao Flash Purchase will approach in-store business next and what plans they will adopt may reference the progress of Amap's rankings.

It is clear that Alibaba will further delve into in-store business and will definitely engage in the transaction process.

Why is Amap the first step for Alibaba to enter in-store business again?

Since Taobao upgraded Flash Purchase on April 30 and officially joined the food delivery battle, the industry has begun to speculate when Alibaba would heavily invest in in-store business again.

This seems to be a business that Alibaba will definitely pursue—resources from in-store and delivery merchants can be reused, reducing fulfillment subsidy costs; from a commercial logic perspective, there are many stores in the in-store consumption scene that cannot offer delivery, with lower business complexity and larger profit margins; from a strategic perspective, entering in-store business aligns with Alibaba's narrative of becoming a large consumer platform, providing comprehensive coverage of consumer needs.

At Alibaba, Taobao, Ele.me, Alipay, and Amap have all participated in in-store business, with Koubei, which focuses on in-store group buying, being the most typical example. In the 15 years since its acquisition by Alibaba, it has gone through four stages involving Taobao, Alipay, Ele.me, and Amap.

By 2025, Alibaba is once again entering the in-store business, with Amap becoming the first entry point.

According to our understanding, Amap applied to the group management for formal project approval of the "Amap Street Ranking" at the end of June, led directly by Amap CEO Guo Ning. A project team of fewer than 100 people has moved into Building 4 of Area C in Alibaba's Hangzhou Xixi Park, which had previously not been utilized. The project is highly confidential, and other employees cannot swipe their cards to enter this building Guo Ning is a long-time employee of Alibaba, with a very early employee number. He previously worked at Yahoo China and joined Alibaba after its investment in the company, responsible for the search recommendation technology of B2B products. Guo Ning ventured out to start his own business but returned to Alibaba in 2019, joining Amap.

Amap's rise began in 2015 when Yu Yongfu took over. Compared to Baidu Maps, which heavily invested in O2O at that time, Amap chose to focus on developing more LBS (Location-Based Services) products. Its DAU grew from 30 million to over 100 million in 2021, stabilizing as the leading map platform in China.

In July 2021, Alibaba combined its three location-based service businesses—Amap, local life services, and Fliggy—into a life services segment, unified under Yu Yongfu's leadership. At the Alibaba investor conference at the end of that year, Yu Yongfu expressed his belief that maps are the best medium for the entire real world. He hoped Amap could use a single map to encompass all aspects of life, connecting all destinations so that users could not only refuel and charge on the map but also find food destinations and book hotel tickets.

A member of Amap's management told us that in the first half of 2025, it would be the best time for Amap to create rankings: the Qwen large model application would mature, and Amap would release its own AI map, allowing user behavior data to be accurately analyzed and utilized. Amap's understanding of the real world has three layers: in addition to geographic location, it should also provide content and information that describe the real world and the ability to fulfill services. The team has formed combat groups around the rankings.

Recently, the internal management of Alibaba has clearly stated that Amap will not be merged into Taobao. Taobao did not participate in Amap's ranking project.

According to our understanding, Ele.me is also conducting internal tests for its in-store business in several cities. An Alibaba employee said, "There are still many Alibaba brands; Ele.me + Taobao Flash Purchase can create a powerful combination; while Amap itself is a small powerhouse."

Using navigation data, Amap aims to recreate a credible food ranking

Food director Chen Xiaoqing once shared that "restaurants rated between 3.5 and 4 usually have delicious food." He found that restaurants with medium ratings tend to focus more on the taste of the food itself, while high-rated restaurants are more likely to be influenced by marketing tactics. This standard was later supplemented by consumers with conditions such as "more than five years old" and "negative reviews are acceptable, but they should be about service, not freshness or taste."

Users need reliable and effective information references. After more than six months of research, Amap believes it has the opportunity to create a real and credible ranking—every day, 170 million people use Amap for navigation, and their actions of searching, saving, navigating, and checking in provide unique consumer behavior data for Amap. Amap personnel stated, "Reviews may be faked, but behavior data cannot be manipulated."

Therefore, the street ranking will never be commercialized. According to our understanding, the ranking of Amap's street list mainly includes four factors: the number of people navigating to the store, repurchase rate, special trips made, and the breadth of the crowd.

The first two are easy to understand: consumers vote with their feet; the more people there are, the more popular the store is, and the more repeat customers there are, the better the taste and quality of the store. "Special trips made" refers to a restaurant that you travel across half a city and drive several kilometers to reach, which is likely to be more attractive than a restaurant located in a residential area where nearby residents only walk a few hundred meters to solve a meal The rating should also be higher. The width of the crowd refers to whether the users navigating to a certain location are local users or from all over the country. The wider the geographical distribution, the higher the recognition of the navigation location.

According to our understanding, in addition to traditional rankings for food, hotels, and tourist attractions, Gaode may also launch segmented rankings for activities such as stream tracing, hiking, and camping in the future.

In 2020, when Guo Ning was in charge of the information center business, Gaode Guide was incubated, which later released a must-visit list that included four categories: food, hotels, attractions, and entertainment, but it was just a simple list.

Five years later, the "Gaode Street Scanning List," leveraging AI algorithm models, can understand data more effectively, making the content more scientific and valuable for reference. Based on such a list, Gaode also wants to redo a new credit system around offline merchants—still using a 0-5 scoring system to measure a merchant's overall rating.

According to our understanding, the scoring criteria will be fully disclosed, including users' real behaviors (navigation counts, search counts, etc.), user characteristics (navigation mileage, influencer level, repeat customers, etc.), evaluation characteristics (professionalism, quantity, etc.), and user reviews (review scores). Gaode has also introduced the Sesame Credit system, where the evaluations from users who navigate to the store and those with high Sesame Credit will carry more weight.

In the eyes of many users, Gaode Map is still primarily seen as a tool for navigation and travel; when opening Gaode, users usually already have a clear destination. In contrast, the mindset around Dazhong Dianping is that consumers use it for comparison, helping them make decisions before heading to a store. The extent to which the Street Scanning List can change consumer habits will depend on Gaode's subsequent guidance and operations.

We learned that there was once a "121 Theory" within Gaode, explaining the three development stages of Gaode products: when DAU reaches 1 million, focus on perfecting one function; when it reaches 20 million DAU, start considering building a platform from a product experience perspective; and when it exceeds 100 million DAU, Gaode can start distributing and doing other things.

Currently, according to QuestMobile data, Gaode Map's average DAU reached 186 million in July 2025, which is six times that of Dazhong Dianping during the same period, reaching a stage where it has sufficient capability for distribution. In China, any platform with such a large flow of traffic would not be willing to remain limited to providing just one function.

In-store is less complex than delivery, but competition is equally fierce

It seems that in-store business is much easier to operate than home delivery, as the latter involves an additional "delivery rider fulfillment" production factor, significantly increasing business complexity. However, the intensity of competition in the in-store battlefield will not be lower than that in the delivery battlefield.

We previously reported that Douyin began promoting local life services in 2021, achieving an annual transaction volume of over 500 billion yuan in four years The target for 2025 is 900 billion.

Douyin's in-store business can quickly gain momentum for two main reasons: first, Meituan had almost no counterattack for nearly half a year in the early stages; second, Douyin (including the Lite version and Volcano version) is aggressively pushing daily traffic of 800 million DAU with group buying packages priced lower than Meituan.

Douyin's fierce offensive has also sparked determination for internal battles and reforms within Meituan. On February 2, 2024, Meituan announced that all businesses, including platform, in-store, home delivery, and basic R&D, would be unified under the responsibility of Senior Vice President Wang Puzhong. The integration of Meituan's in-store and home delivery two major business groups signifies that it has entered a wartime state, requiring consolidation of operations, coordinated scheduling, and concentrated defense against competitors.

Subsequently, Meituan successively connected the membership systems of in-store and home delivery businesses, integrated the merchant promotion and R&D staff from both sides, and encouraged merchants to launch more group buying packages, with Meituan providing additional subsidies. The Meituan and Dianping apps also made certain distinctions, with the former being more efficiency-oriented and the latter downplaying transactions to return to content attributes, the most influential of which are Dianping's must-eat list and the Black Pearl list.

By the end of June 2025, during a media group interview following the release of Dianping's 2024 must-eat list, Li Shubin, head of Meituan's platform and review division, stated that the must-eat list operates as an independent team within Dianping, not involving any commercialization goals. "Whether merchants buy promotions on Meituan or launch group buying packages does not affect their listing on the must-eat list." Restaurants that make it onto the must-eat list see an average sales increase of over 50% for their group buying packages on Dianping.

The must-eat list also attempts to combat merchants' attempts to manipulate reviews through data sampling, monitoring merchants with a sudden influx of positive reviews, undercover visits, and customer follow-ups. Li Shubin mentioned, "In the past year, over 20 listed restaurants have been removed from the list for violating integrity standards."

The first player, after gaining a leading market share, focuses on refined operations, while later entrants rapidly grow due to their resource advantages but soon encounter bottlenecks, with new entrants eager to join the fray.

According to our understanding, Douyin's life services team realizes that many merchants are difficult to capture, such as small and medium-sized businesses with low chain rates. By 2025, they believe that competition with Meituan in in-store group buying has reached a stalemate.

Now, with Alibaba's entry, it will disrupt the existing landscape once again, just like in the food delivery battlefield.

Author of this article: Guan Yiwen, Source: [LatePost](https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzU3Mjk1OTQ0Ng==&mid=2247528770&idx=1&sn=10f37abd0d952c4d21d65b977e154c11&chksm=fd8522df6daa6e63ce4fa27108b04f96dc3fe75455bd7adb0e26286766166a494d9423629e5b&mpshare=1&scene=23&srcid=09100A8GP4rh7yo2oprcylF8&sharer_shareinfo=00addd952 edf2e22e77fdf7bd6d15a52&sharer_shareinfo_first=af937b88a3feca56e8444f1c6a71e43a#rd), Original title: "Late Point Exclusive | Alibaba's First Step in Store: Amap Creates Rankings, Rebuilding an Offline Credit System"

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