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VIRTUALISATION Google local search misses the mark
VIRTUALISATION Google local search misses the mark | Google local search misses the mark |
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| by Stephen Withers | |
| Tuesday, 07 April 2009 | |
  
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By estimating a user's location from the IP address, Google is able to restrict the search to that broad area. This is more convenient for users, and helps Google stave off local search engines. In addition to localising the search, Google also returns a map of the results for these types of query. That's definitely a convenience feature, especially when you're travelling. You might not recognise the name of a street or suburb, but it's easy to see how close a 'pin' on a map is to your hotel. This new feature isn't restricted to terms such as restaurant or bank - searches for business names or street addresses are automatically refined to reflect the user's location. This all sounds great to me. But even though Google software engineers Jenn Taylor and Jim Muller claim "we've just finished the worldwide rollout of local search results on a map, which will now appear even when you don't type in a location," there's no sign of it here, even when I try their sample searches. While I do get localised sponsored links (which aren't very helpful), there's no sign of local search results, and there's no map. Maybe it's just that the "worldwide rollout" isn't quite complete yet. |
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