Today, 24 September 2025, we celebrate our thirty-first birthday online. Working on the current version of the site (managed as always with codes verified by the W3C Validator with zero errors), we cannot help but emphasise the importance and significance of the content of our work, which now represents the daily reality of several million people: enthusiasts, gourmands or simply individuals who have realised that good food is the very basis of quality of life.
The exponential and daily growth of our users – those who consult us to choose where to eat – is a great emotional boost for us, and we believe it is also a boost for the entire professional catering sector.
As absolute pioneers of the most powerful means of communication ever invented by man, we can say that we are honoured to have anticipated everything that would happen, confirming that agriculture – of which we represent a cultural evolution – remains, as it always has been, one of the most solid and clear lines of the economy of every single country on the planet.
Our project was born thanks to the intuition of Simone Rizzi, a Milanese restaurateur and chef who has been involved in wine grape cultivation for several years and is the son of Michele Rizzi, one of the most illustrious Italian advertisers in history alongside Armando Testa. Passionate about cooking since childhood, Simone immediately understood the immense potential of the Internet because, like me, he had used Videotel for years, the father of the Internet, which was born in France where it was called Minitel in the early 1980s.
For almost a year, I had been wondering – like many others at the time, I'm sure – what could be done in this brand new universe to be successful. I can assure you that the answer was not easy to find.
I remember when we launched our portals on the Internet on 24 September 1994 (the day we signed the agreement with the Michelin Guide), search engines at the time returned only 7-9 links for the words “ristorante” or “restaurant”. There was practically no one else there yet.
Today, 24 September 2025, it has become difficult to determine the exact number of online presences. Google reported the exact number until last year and then decided to change direction, which is a real shame.
The social role of the Internet is now well established and very important, unlike all other means of communication measured through statistics.
From our point of view, we can simply confirm that we were right: we were on the right track. After seeing such impressive results, we hope that they will translate into profits for both our customers and ourselves.
As of 24 September 2025, we have 1,312,243,125 users, with 1,871,600 users in the last week. The count starts from Wednesday, 4 November 1998, adding up the data from the three providers used over time and taking into account all interruptions due to technical requirements. For those who don't know, the count starts from zero after each interruption.
The one billion user threshold was exceeded in 2019.
It is worth remembering the first 29,452,657 visits recorded in the first three months of online presence, from 24 September to December 1994. We soon discovered that these were incorrect, as the counter had not been properly configured with the “click-through” mode, i.e. one by one. Once synchronised, the results were not long in coming, allowing us to exceed 300 million users by the end of 1998. For this reason, we have always excluded them from the total.
Siamo diventati, per l'editoria del settore e per il pubblico, il punto di riferimento del new media. La Guida Michelin compie invece, nel 2025, ben 125 anni; l'edizione italiana ne compie 70 ed è indiscutibilmente, da molti anni, il metro di misura internazionale di questo settore.
Il nostro punteggio SEO (periodo 29/12/2021 - 29/12/2022) è stato del 78%. Ci auguriamo che quello attuale sia in crescita verso la posizione di leadership che per molti anni abbiamo occupato, visto il lavoro e l'impegno che abbiamo investito e continuiamo a investire.
Ours is ‘the Official Guide to Quality Restaurants’ on the Internet, which over time will expand to every corner of the globe, with the expertise necessary to do so. What is certain is that we will never buy restaurant telephone numbers from global telephone directories and then add photographs, as others unfortunately do: the restaurants we include must have been visited by competent people.
In my opinion, the criticism provided by open source reviews, which have spread online in recent years, is unfortunately too easily manipulated.
Human beings seem to have fallen into the trap of appearances, caught up in the ego of the free labour-sucking leech that is social media.
It is no coincidence that fake news has unfortunately spread exponentially; as a result, it is much more professional to provide users with verified information.
Giovanni Zullo
Owner and Publisher
Here are some of the initiatives that have copied or followed our portal.