Google Adds Location Targeted Searching 326
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"
Re:I know, i allways complane (Score:2, Informative)
labs.google.com IS NOT google.com (Score:5, Informative)
Scott
Already got it. (Score:5, Informative)
Multimap's main use is simple as an online map, and it's used heavily here in the UK, but they do show pin-marks on the location of any services they know about.
They only show links to certain categories of service (hotels, and the like), but limited though it is, the search by location service has been available for some time.
Nice idea, but other pages are more useful (Score:1, Informative)
Here in the UK I've been using www.upmystreet.com, with which - based on a poscode that can usually locate an individual property - one can find businesses based on location, local representation, council performance, maps and all sorts of other information and even discussions based on location of user. It's a great idea and extremely well implemented and - which it might not be as elegant as searching the entire internet for web pages - is genuinely useful and adds hugely to what's possible through the yellow pages.
Re:Yahoo Yellow Pages (Score:5, Informative)
~Berj
A San Diego Version (Score:2, Informative)
I got the latitude and longitude data from the Census for zip codes and created a HUGE reference tables for the distances between zip codes. Lots of math in the search code.
It's not new (Score:2, Informative)
Yahoo Yellow Pages - Not the same thing (Score:4, Informative)
Um, quite a bit of difference, theoretically. How about searching for parks, lakes, fire hydrants, mailboxes, phone booths, one-way streets, registered sex offenders, gullible people, etc.
Re:Yahoo Yellow Pages (Score:3, Informative)
Unfortunately, I was about to try some searches to see what other usefull things it could do other than yellow pages searches, when the site came to grinding halt. Sure enough, the story had just made the front page for non subscribers
For yellow page type searches, I usually use mapquest, and I'm sure if this is better. The mapquest yellow page info seems to be out of data as it has turned up places that are out of business, and ommitted new ones. On the other hand the listing of results is much simple to read on mapquest. In addition, I don't know how smart google is on dealing with pages that have lists of addresses.
Re:Looking for telecommuters? (Score:4, Informative)
Don't mod this guy up.
He is stealing someone else's post
Original post [slashdot.org] Damn plagerist.Google and your location (Score:1, Informative)
Type in a US phone number with area code into google and if your phone number is not a private number/mobile phone google will display your name, address and a map to your house.
Re:labs.google.com IS NOT google.com (Score:3, Informative)
Of course, you're right, that doesn't mean it's scaled. It's likely on ten machines, not a few thousand.
Still Some Bugs? (Score:3, Informative)
Searching for Microsoft and Redmond [google.com] in the search and location fields yields nothing.
From Google's regular search engine I get these results [google.com].
I think they still have some work cut out for them. Granted, it's a great feature, but nothing earth-shattering, since the concept of "yellow pages" has been online for a very long time.
Some notable YP type engines that I might suggest:
- Yahoo Yellow Pages [yahoo.com]
- InfoSpace [infospace.com]
- Bigfoot [bigfoot.com]
Re:Useful service (Score:3, Informative)
I believe I hit it on the 4th try.