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Who Are My Neighbors, Mr.Search Engine?
Phoe6 writes "'Google's goal is to connect searchers with the information they need whether it's halfway around the world or in their neighborhood,' said company co-founder Sergey Brin, as Google is unveiling its location-based search tool local.google.com.
This is going heads on with Yahoo, as it put its SmartView content on its maps." Phoe6 also points to this AP story carried by the Houston Chronicle about "Verizon Communications' SuperPages.com, overhauled to deliver more useful local results." Google's service seems to work pretty well -- I've just located a few coffee shops with free wireless within easy walking distance. Update: 03/17 18:33 GMT by T : Here's a no-reg link to the same AP story.
Did you mean: Chinese Restaurant With MSG in Food and Without Real Vegetarian Option
Your search - Chinese Restaurant Without MSG in Food and Real Vegetarian Option, no lying about it - did not match any documents.
No pages were found containing "Chinese Restaurant Without MSG in Food and Real Vegetarian Option, no lying about it".
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I think that the title is a little bit misleading. If you go to the site, the text directly above "Google Home" and "Local Search Help" says: "Find local businesses and services on the web." This isn't to find your neighbors: it's to find your nearest McDonalds, etc.
Also, the local search help page talks about finding businesses, and mentions nothing of finding specific people.
What about people who live in backwards places like California and New York (both of those are in the United States). People in those places aren't even allowed to carry firearms, I doubt even Google can reach places like this.
I know that a good handful of /. users will not really need such a search tool. They'd need to know where the nearest website is so they can order a pizza/coffee/artifical heart online.
Looks like the service is down...at least when I try I get a server error.
One should not theorize before one has data. -Sherlock Holmes-
"Server Error
The server encountered a temporary error and could not complete your request.
Please try again in a minute or so."
Quick! Someone get a Google cache!
Kids these days. They don't know the difference between classic, and just plain old.
You slashdotted Gooogle!!
Server Error
The server encountered a temporary error and could not complete your request.
Please try again in a minute or so.
Truly this is a great day for the Web and the Internet as a whole
If thou see a fair woman pay court to her, for thus thou wilt obtain love
Coudln't this just be added to the existing google interface with place: or location:?
I'd have to say that most of these services are already way behind. Check out Verizon's map based search (as mentioned). They have a Java and HTML version.
:)
The Java version I've linked rocks. I've used it to find all of the sushi places within driving distances of my place
Verizon Map Based Search
I searched for a hardware store close to my Manhattan zip code. The first entry is sending me about 4 miles south ... the second entry has me going to Jersey ... and the third puts me in Brooklyn. I'm all for sight-seeing, but not when I just want to buy a wrench.
The form says: US address, city & state, or zip
Indefinitely Detained US Citizen
Server Error
The server encountered a temporary error and could not complete your request.
Please try again in a minute or so.
This has been DONE before!! http://www.whitepages.com http://www.citysearch.com And those are the two I use on a regular basis --- God knows there's gotta be 7,000,000 more. Stick to internet searches and IPOs, please, Google. It's what you do best.
Jay | http://oldos.org
How else could we slashdot Google? =)
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
So are there any plans for Google to use a similar service in Canada? I'd love to try a search linked to my postal code, but it looks like it's only accepting Zip numbers...
Luke 10:25-37 (NRSV)
For more, go here
"Love is a familiar; Love is a devil: there is no evil angel but Love." --William Shakespeare ('Love's Labors Lost')
I suppose someone with a small business could check out what sort of nearby competition they have using this.
Also, when researching for possible locations for a business, maybe someone could type in their zip code to see whether or not the neighborhood already has people providing the planned service/goods?
I, for one, welcome our new Googled neighbor overlords!
Wait, no I don't! Screw them!
I decided to look for all the weirdos that are near my home. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that the local Holiday Inn was the first return (or that there seems to be an ample supply of others)...
I think I need to move.
Long, cute, or funny Sigs are just another form of over compensation, used by geeks, nerdz, etc.
I just looked up escorts and found a ton of matches! Thanks Google!
I don't think Dominos pizza deliver across the atlantic...
:)
I suspect I *won't* be using this service to find a local business...
Searching the three line greenbar yellow page listings is ok, but Google's keyword coverage seems a bit spotty. "94303 chinese food" doesn't turn up local results, but "94303 chinese" does.
The free text geo-categorization seems to depend on finding full addresses in the web pages, not as sophisticated as Metacarta or Topix.net
I say it's about time! Superpages.com and their likes have so far been nothing short of big disappointments. On superpages the results returned from simple searches are completely disappointing.
Yellow page companies are basically putting their stuff online, thinking, as long as it's got similar features as their offline book versions, it's good enough. Well it's not. And it's about damn time a competitor like Google shows up to ruin their show.
eTrade SUCKS
Let's see...
If I'm in the center of Europe, the nearest attractions are Io, Ganymede, Callisto, Metis, Thebe, Lida, Himalia...
I wonder if this is part of a trend away from the common associations of the web being a giant globalized impersonal place full of strangers, and making it also have a more small and personal aspect- a good place to get information on (and maybe even interact or get involved with) your own neighborhood?
I wonder what's next? Ebay neighborhood garage sales? Bid online, walk next door to pick it up? Web-conferencing the community association meeting? Using an online dating service to meet people instead of going out to a ba... wait a minute.
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
Even people that believe in pre-destiny look both ways before crossing the street.
too big a search default range. I did a simple search on "italian" as the keyword with an urban address and got hits more than 50 miles away by default. Much simpler, IMO, to do 1, 5, or 10 miles at first, then perhaps automatically ranging outward if there are a very small number of hits.
In my search original result set (with the 50 miles range), I had the first few hits being a short distance away, then a chunk (ie, results 3-6) a great distance away, then another chunk (ie, results 7-10) back closer to home, with a lengthy divide between each set (ie, 1-3 and 7-10 were under 3 miles, while 3-6 were greater than 20 miles away. no italian in between seems quite odd for such an urban region). IMO, everything needs to be better sorted by distance from the input address.
And lastly, number the entries when the map is displayed: When I initially searched, I did not get a map showing what hit was where. After clicking a link to obtain that map containing little numbers showing where each hit was located, and a short list to the right of the map showed which marker matched which result. It would be useful if this numeric list were also done down below where the results have more detail (like phone and address).
Even despite the above, this is a pretty neat tool and could be rather useful for it's current state.
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
I don't think the site is really slashdotted...I think if it can't find any results for your current search, you get an error-type page.
Looks like the developers still have some work to do...
Kids these days!
but hey 191 other countries don't matter right ?
Then I saw that one was a bar that offered FREE BEER WITH EVERY PACKERS TOUCHDOWN and I was like... blisssssss... I'm there. It really *did* put the best results first.
Some might remember this from a while back. This feature's origins come from the Google Programming Contest. They said that the good entries might actually become google features if they had sufficient merit. The winner from 2002 whipped up a prototype geographic search. I guess that this is the full-scale realization of that work.
Please stop misusing Catch-22 to describe chicken-egg problems or other paradoxes that are not Catch-22.
Netflix has a search feature that suggests movies based on your previous ratings of films. This is the type of thing that really ought to be applied to search engines and web logs. What I'd really like is the ability to say search for eateries near where I am that folks with tastes like mine liked--or posts on a weblog that folks with tastes like mine liked.
When I first moved to San Diego I tried searching for Ralph's grocery store in SBC's SMARTPages. It wasn't listed, later I discovered a whole bunch of other stores which I knew existed but also weren't listed. After that I gave up and stuck with what works: google.
I always suspected SBC's directory services might only list subscribers which pay to be listed--though I don't know that for sure, so take that for what it's worth, conjecture.
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
Server Error
The server encountered a temporary error and could not complete your request.
Please try again in a minute or so.
too many times.
Seems like this experiment needs more work.
That's too bad- if you had quoted an answer to the question from a movie or t.v. show like Futurama you would have been modded to +5 Funny by now.
This was pretty clever.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
...are getting rich working from home in the spare time they have between penis lengthening sessions.
something that is like this is GeoURL. maps coordinates to websites.
...but how did the author find "coffee shops with free wireless" using that search???
The Philosophy of Liberty | lewrockwell.com
Server Error
... you slashdotted Google!
The server encountered a temporary error and could not complete your request.
Please try again in a minute or so.
You guys finally did the impossible
Googlecaching!
The sport where the cache searches for YOU!
(Searched for "geocache" within the default radius of my home. No hits.)
How the hell is this any different to how Yell or Scoot work?
I was expecting it to work out my geographic location based on my IP address (possible?) and give me local results for local people.
What? I have to type something ELSE in?
What if I didn't know where I was?
...did you see the attribution on the Houston Chronicle site? "Assocaited" Press.
Google is rapidly evolving into one of, if not, the most advanced search engine in the world.
Along with its regular search and local search, you can make an extremely customizable search with the following features:
site:, link:, inurl:, allinurl:, intitle:, allintitle:, intext:, allintext:, filetype:, ext:, inanchor:, allinanchor:, phonebook:, rphonebook:, bphonebook:, daterange:
As the words suggest, site: will search for the search terms in a specific site, or domain level (e.g. site:www.slashdot.org, site:.org), inurl: will search for the search terms in the URL as well as the content. allinurl: will search for the search terms only inside the url. filetype: will search for the search terms with results for only the specified filetype (e.g. filetype:.doc), etc.
It also has a very complex calculator function, which comes into effect automatically when you enter a mathematical query (e.g. tablespoon / pi ^ e).
It also (imo) has the best ranking system, which isnt bias by money (excluding the sponsored links).
With google soon to bring out their own email, I can see google becoming an extremely wide used site (even more so than now) in the near future.
*Hopes for his first +5, Intresting*...
Meta tags for longitude and latitude.
Searched for goats in my zip code, first site returned was McDonald's Restaurants. I dont think im gonna eat at Mc'Ds any more.
"I'm feeling lucky". For surfing around in your neighbourhood. Random button that shows cafeteria, fancy shop or art exhibition.
:) :p
p.s. or "the girl next door"
p.s.s. not intended as funny
dead seroius.
Out of curiousity, I searched for "porn" near Southborough, MA. I got a listing of lawyers. Google must know that I'm browsing for porn at work.
type in "Crack Dealer". I got a link on the right to some lameo cop killer who was dealing crack and shot a cop and died from lethal injection in texas.
In the left column it gives me a local address, presumably for some poor schmuck who has the same name.
oops!
because I have been enjoined by this Holy Office to abandon the false opinion which maintains that the Sun is the centre
if you do a normal google for a street address, it will point you to yahoo mapping.
I've actually been using a new local search that arived recently. Here's an article...
This little 1200/75 baud terminal which is in almost every french home is great for searching local businesses.
:). but it's France only, as local.google is US only :D
We just have to switch it on and dial 3611 (the annuaire ). type in what you are looking for in the "Activite" field (restaurant, music store, whatever..) and you get results in the city or departement you've chosen, or in a certain range.
That outdated tech is really fast for this task
.. but it's a start. And Google is still #1 for me. No fancy banners or junk about Hollywood's latest production, just the facts. Beautiful. Less is more.
Huh, neat. But how is it any different from Yahoo's Local Info that I've been using on my cell phone for several months now? Looks like a standard location based yellow pages search to me, with a couple extra hot links added for convenience. I guess we'll have to wait and see where they take this.
Hey can someone post a mirror to the local.google.com? In case it gets slashdotted!?
-matt
I search for sushi near 66207 and the two most highly rated sushi restaurants in town are not even listed! Clearly this is a work in progress.
:-)
Another interesting discovery: search for "People who understand Windows 2003" near zip code "66207" returns 'Planned Parenthood of Kansas'... just what is Google suggesting here???
Its asking for directions. It should obviously be Ms. Search Engine.
As the Google logo on the page states, this appears to be a public BETA.
I don't say this so that people don't critique the site yet.
Rather, after you discuss here, send your critique to Google! I'm excited about this, but the sort order of the results shows me things in New Jersey before it shows me things in Pennsylvania (and I know there are three Chinese Restaurants right around the corner, closer than Jersey). I would hope that either they already know about some of these issues or would like to make the search engine more useful.
The best place I could come up with was Google's Contact page, which has links to forums and the like, but no reference to local.google at all. If someone has a better place, please post it here. The local.google site has no contact link I can see.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
There is something those outside the USA can do about this:
Mobilemaps is the open source alternative. You will need a little geo experience at this stage to make it work outside of USA/UK, and the map and geocoding data must be available in your country.
This solution was around well before google's - or even their programming competition which introduced this to them. We're looking for active help from developers, and it's a shame slashdot don't consider mentioning us. We'll be launching a collaborative geo-crawler shortly, so there should be plenty to do.
Philip Abrahamson
Mobilemaps Development Team
So now I've got my location sorted I can get a McD's approx 2979 miles away... oh joy
the future's bright, the future's ginger
What it appears Google is doing is taking whenever it gets a zipcode or phone number or city/state mention in its master web search database, they're mapping it to its GPS coordinates. For this search, they're tossing asside any results that don't have a GPS location determined, and then instead of ranking by PageRank order they're ranking by distance from the user-supplied location and the page's location.
It's not a bad idea. Seems to have a few bugs in it, but that's why this is a Google Labs page rather than one that's on the main site.
I got the same message. Of course, as the city I live in can be accurately described as a "temporary error", it took me awhile to figure out that the message meant there was a problem at Google.
So I went and searched for 'prostitute', 'hooker', and 'call girl' in my local area - nothing! Just some churches, the district attourney, random businesses, but no jackpot! They expect this thing to be *useful* without giving decent sex results?! Everyone knows search engines are for finding sex!
Although, I'd like to know why 'hooker' came up with the Jewish Student's Union, and why 'call girls' results have the Boys and Girls Club, and Boy Scouts...
www.google.com is working fine
I did a search on Science Fiction...s cience+ficti on&near=97267&btnG=Google+Search
= en&lr=&ie=U TF-8&sa=G&near=97267&radius=1
http://local.google.com/local?sc=1&q=
and the first listing received was for a Xtian bookseller. Is this editorializing on the part of Google regarding religion? Hmm.
Another search, for BBQ near home, resulted in the best local BBQ joint appearing; alongside an ad for escort services.
http://local.google.com/local?q=BBQ&hl
The restaurant was underthrilled; I did not contact the escort service for their comment.
Conclusion: Very Beta.
There is nothing wrong with yr Internet. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling the transmission - NSA
I actually had not noticed Googles Local search, there text renders small on my screen and I don't notice a lot of subtle changes they make. Anyway because of it I was able to find some local escorts in my town. Now I don't have to go to eros-guide.com and see all the chicks who are in every other city but mine YAY
Ave Molech Setting
...are they giving credit (or a job) to the guy who won the Google Programming Contest?
bp
Not necessarily a bad thing, and you know with Google, they won't slack on the development of it, but a US-centric Internet is so 1997.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
mobilemaps.com the open source alternative.
Philip
As much as I love Google this is a VERY different type of area to do searching in.. We develop and provide detailed location content and in just one Sydney city street alone there are 400+ locations just at street level alone.. How many have a web presence - perhaps 10-15% which means Google actually misses 80-90% of actual locations people could be looking for. This will vary from country to country but that's my point - this is the "line in the sand" where their universal ability breaks down.. Just bear that in mind.. and that's why you will see a whole branch of other search content and engines that will deliver content.. I guess if Google buys a heap of *other* directories/yellow pages et then that's different - but then that just means they are changing their business - a lot of this information COSTS - and not a freely available web crawl.. If they want/are getting into it then they are changing their whole service and cost structures.. unless they are content with offering a fragmented database and with-geographic-qualifications (eg US addresses only etc..). There are very real costs and very real barriers to entry to deliver quality and completeness. Alex.
Last time I cited a bunch of examples of things you could do with a location-based search engine that you can't do with a yellow pages database. But this time I can't be bothered.
I just think Whiz Kids has a nice ring to it!
eg. coffee shops near Jersey City, NJ
Some of the hits in above search ( Hoboken,NJ & New York,NY ) require you to either
a. Take a train, $3 ticket
b. Take a ferry, $5 ticket
c. Take the Hudson tunnel, $6 toll
Costwise, these hits ( from NYC ) should be ranked way below any hits within the state of NJ, since you could drive from Jersey City,NJ to most anywhere else in NJ and not pay a buck ( unless you take the NJ turnpike, even then you'd pay atmost $5 to reach Delaware )
Google could spit out a two-column table which lists distance AND cost to get there. Or have a algorithm that assigns a weight to distance, a weight to cost & compute the distance-cost-factor...we did this way back in grad school, CS 301.
btw, here's the link to this story's article.
Curious to figure out how it might work, I looked up my domain name. It gave me an address in Redwood City, CA. WTF?
(I once hosted with an ISP who had a POP there, but not at that location. My domain record has my correct address, as well as the correct contact addresses - which are in a different city in the same metro area.)
Digging around with google for that street address came up with Greatcircle - the maintainers of the majordomo mailing list. Nice guys, but I've never been associated with them. (Ought to install it some day. Back when I hosted mailing lists I administered them manually.)
Turns out that they've been using my domain name in their documentation as a generic domain name. And the doc is all over the web - including several mailing list archives in which Brent Chapman's signature appears, giving the company address. B-) Of course the doc is also on their website, as is there address.
Given the broad use and extensive documentation of majordomo, and the relatively low profile of my own little consulting firm, I suspect that my domain name appears on the net more often associated with the former than the latter.
I suspect the service is using webcrawler information to create a database of search terms vs things-that-look-like-addresses (either on the same page or the same site) then scoring matchups by frequency, and the search engine returns the highest score.
(Meanwhile I've found out where the spambots are harvesting one of the bogus usernames that keep showing up in spam to my site. B-) )
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Best I can do w/o mods!
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
It looks like a great service, except for one thing:
Just like yahoo (aka Yahoo Maps) and many other online services, google uses MapQuest to provide directions.
I wish more sites would instead start using the company formerly known as MapBlast/Vicinity. Their Line Drive maps are much easier to use, and their directions are much better, at least based on extensive personal experience.
Granted, they got bought by the Beast, but the technology still works...
I wonder what Mapblast is doing wrong that the consistently inferior service gets consistently greater exposure and linkage?
Maybe one of these days I can figure out a way to turn a link like this into a link like this
Maybe a combination of a hosts file entry and a quickie PHP script on my personal Web server to parse and redirect... Or would that be considered a violation of the DMCA? *grin*
The facts have a liberal bias. --The Daily Show
"US address, city & state, or zip" Us Canadians have feelings too eh !!!
I've heard Google runs on linux, and linux users hate Windows, but that's pretty funny to link those two together like that!
My web pages don't have any zip code or latitude / longitude information on them... and sure enough they don't show up in any local.google.com search.
What exactly does it look for on a page to know where the business is?
Should I put my entire address on every page? on just the home page? Or is a zip code in a meta tag good enough for google to know where I'm talking about.
I really like it! Searching for pizza in my zip code shows just what I would hope.
Celebrate Excellence!
Google is rapidly evolving into one of, if not, the most advanced search engine in the world.
If Google's actually evolving, it would be reproducing itself, with random mutations that through selection over time will enhance its abilities.
Not that I'm putting that past Google's coders at all...
Seeing as I live in Canada, and it only accepts US addresses, that's a strange definition of "local."
At least I don't live in Europe or Asia... "Local: Get on a plane..."
I gotta stop putting my Postal Code (Canadian) on online forms!
I always thought it just gave my neighbourhood. When I put it in Yahoo maps, the map I got back had the star right on my house!
I can see why this would be helpful for people who have just moved to a new area, or for people traveling (Is there a coffeehouse near my hotel?). I think in the longer term there will be paid ads from businesses on the results pages.
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
I searched for "Food" in my hometown of Santa Monica, CA and the first 10 results I got back were all for Pet Food. Various Petco stores accounted for 8 of the 10.
I searched for "sex" in my zip code... came up with like 10 hits, all religious youth group anti-sex pages or animal livestock breeding...
what a hick ass little town
Useless.... it's only for the United States.
This is going heads on with Yahoo, as it put its SmartView content on its maps.
Yahoo uses Google for it's searches... so I would imagine this is no different.
The next still will be local.news.google.com.
Pretty please? 3
... is still in the mail. Also, one of those little Smart ID WiFi detectors; somewhere I have one of the Kensington ones, but it did not work as well as I'd hoped except when near enough to an access point that the blinking LEDs are close enough to read by. This, uh, limits the usefulness. I wish more wireless cards had both internal antennas and jacks for external; the antenna-ready one I'm getting costs about 5X the cheap but perfectly functional U.S. Robotics one I've loaned to a friend. (So the distance tradeoff better be worth it! :))
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
What's even better is the fact that I (and probably loads of other people) first thought of putting McDonalds, of all businesses, in the search when first taking a look at local.google.com! :)
.
Sorry, but somebody had to say it. I'[ll go mod myself down now...
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks