Google Adds Location Targeted Searching

miradu writes "Many Slashdot users may remember that the winner of last year's Google programming contest's entry was a location specific search. Now, Google has made a version of Daniel's idea available to use on Google Labs. Google Search By Location lets you search for things near some zipcode, or city/state. It then gives you a map with each search result pinned on it. V"

Great, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

How come when I search for the location of "Hot single geek chicks" there are no results found?

i for one

[Anonymous Coward]

welcome our location-targetted searching overlords

Most popular /. search so far

[Superfreaker]

Donuts

Re:Great, but...

[scumbucket]

Probably because you put 'Ann Arbor, MI' (Taco's current area of residence) in the address.........

Still needs work:

[grub]

It's a great idea but the heuristics need work:

"Your search for money grubbing scumbags near Lindon, UT did not match any documents within 15 miles."

OMG! Google got slashdoted!

[bflong]

Server Error
The server encountered a temporary error and could not complete your request.
Please try again in a minute or so.

Does anyone have a link to the google cache of this page?

er.... nevermind...

Uh Oh

[baldass_newbie]

I was searching for a non-slashdotted version near me when it borked.

Re:Still needs work:

[orthogonal]

It's a great idea but the heuristics need work:

"Your search for money grubbing scumbags near Lindon, UT did not match any documents within 15 miles."

That's because your spelling is wrong: it's
money grubbing SCOumbags

Easy to fix

[setzman]

You should have typed "Washington, DC" for your location.

Google's evolution

[Peterus7]

What next, Google-RIAA search; 'enter a kazaa username and google will give you the IP address, personal information, credit card number, and home address of the user!'

or, using google-patriot act search, type in a person's name, and you get all the secret cameras in their home, their entire geneology, pictures from their past, and other weird things that only the conspiracy theorists know...

Or, even better, using google for moms, a google that scans the computer for cookies to find out what site her kid has been visiting via a cookie scan or something.

I dunno, but eventually it's going to seem like an invasion of privacy with these search engines, but then again, once you put something online without any protection, it *is* public domain.

A search for...

[Anonymous Coward]

goats near Christmas Island is too disturbing for me.

Re:OMG! Google got slashdoted!

[no soup for you]

Sometimes it decides on its own to break for a nice pot of Earl Grey and some fresh silicon wafers. We'll keep it running as much as possible, but please bear with us as we work to make it faster and more reliable.

From the Google Search By Location FAQ [google.com]

Re:Useful service

[u01000101]

On the other side of things, Google stands to make a killing here. Google can sell a new class of ads to people like plumbers, who don't need a webpage.

Wait, I have a better idea: why not put together a collection of local info (maybe print it also) and call that, say, Yellow Pages? :-)

In other words, I call "prior art".

Re:Most popular /. search so far

[Seth Finklestein]

Search results [verisign.com]

Re:Great, but...

[orangepeel]

body temperature of 40C or greater

So you're searching for SARS victims?

Re:I know, i allways complane

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to be confused with www.upmyass.com

Re:OMG! Google got slashdoted!

[squidfood]

So,

Is it better to slashdot google or google slashdot?

Re:Great, but...

[MessageFactory]

How come when I search for the location of "Hot single geek chicks" there are no results found?
I tried "single geek" and found 4 billion results. Yippee me!

...oh wait...damn.

....it's a joke people :-)

nope...

[professorhojo]

it doesn't know where saddam is either...

ph

It works so good its scary!

[Anonymous Coward]

I searched for unlaid, unwashed geeks sitting in darkened rooms in the middle of the day bathed only in the light from an LCD while posting to Slashdot anonymously and it fired up the quickcam sitting on top of my monitor and automatically made a picture of me the desktop background image.

Congratulations, you've slashdotted Google!

[redbaron7]

After a lot of trying, you've finally slashdotted Google! lol

I keep getting server errors when I try searching for things like donuts or my own webpage. Either that, or it thinks Irving,TX is a black hole. Hmm, don't answer that.

RB

Re:Great, but... (the three Ls)

[gosand]

How come when I search for the location of "Hot single geek chicks" there are no results found?

You should probably change the location to something other than "my parent's basement".

Re:US-only

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait...there's something outside the US? ;)

No useful service....

[mseeger]

... covers only one country with unreliable power supply ;-).

Regards, Martin

Re:Useful service

[Theatetus]

Don't feel bad. I live in Northern Virginia, where about two-thirds of all roads are named "Glebe". There's North, South, East, and West Glebe Road. North Glebe runs roughly north, while South Glebe runs east-west. West Glebe goes south, and is south of South Glebe. All of them have different route numbers, and the route numbers change.