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By Bill Slawski, on 6 30, 2010
Ever go to a search engine to find out more about a specific place, such as a street or park or business? Want to see what the area around a historic monument is like? These types of searches are often referred to as location searches because the intent behind them is to find information about a specific location.
You can perform a location search in map-oriented search engines such as Google Maps or Yahoo Local or Bing Maps, but the search engines may also provide map type results in their Web search results as well. Before Universal Search was part of Google, maps had started showing up in Google’s web search results. If you searched for a business name or category with some geographic information included in your query, you may have been shown a map in your web search results alongside a listing relevant to your search.
A Google patent granted this week explores some of the challenges that a search engine may face when performing a location search. The way that search engines respond to those challenges shows off some of technical abilities of search engines, and the methods that they use.
For instance, in location searches, some of the issues that search engines may have to resolve can include:
Continue reading Google and Location Searches
By Bill Slawski, on 5 03, 2010
If you have a business where you want customers to visit in person, and you haven’t added and/or verified that business in Google Maps, you may want to consider doing so. You can do this regardless of whether you have a web site or not.
The Google Navigator system that Google has developed for mobile phones allows people to navigate to destinations in their cars, and even search for types of nearby businesses rather than specific businesses at specific addresses. So, if you want to find a nearby Thai restaurant, you can type in “Thai restaurant” and Google will either show you the nearest one it knows about, or provide a list of restaurants that you can choose from.
A new patent application from Google hints at even more features from such a navigation system that can associate information from your personal information management software into the Google navigation system, from programs such as contact lists, calendars, and task lists.
For instance, you set up a task list on your smart phone to visit a new client, and then pick up stamps and mail out letters, drop off drycleaning, and go grocery shopping. You’ve also added the new client’s address to your personal information system contact list and calendar.
Continue reading New Reason to Submit Businesses to Google Maps: Google Navigator and Personal Information Management Integration?
By Bill Slawski, on 1 21, 2010
I usually help site owners with increasing traffic to their web sites, and keep an eye on patent filings from companies that are involved in delivering information to people on the Web. But there seems to be another kind of traffic on the minds of companies like Apple, Yahoo, and Google.
The intersection between internet-connected phones and local search is increasingly including such services as providing maps, driving directions, public transit information, and location aware applications. Apple has a serious interest in providing applications for the iPhone that take advantage of location aware services as well, and a new patent filing from them describes a couple of interesting new services they may offer that involve parking and public transit services.
As I noted, they aren’t alone in focusing upon providing real time information involving maps and transportation.
Continue reading Apple vs. Google vs. Yahoo on Location Awareness and Parking
By Bill Slawski, on 1 14, 2010
At some point in the not distant future, Yahoo search will be replaced with Microsoft’s search service Bing.
Exactly how that might impact the other services that Yahoo offers isn’t really clear at this point, but it’s likely that Yahoo will still offer many of the portal services that it provides to its visitors now.
Will Yahoo Local and Yahoo Maps be affected? Again, that isn’t really clear. I’ve been keeping an eye out for patent filings from search engines for a while now, and I do still see many published by Yahoo that provide some interesting possibilities, even outside of search.
Take one Yahoo patent filing published today, for instance:
Real Time Detection of Parking Space Availability
Invented by Amit Umesh Shanbhag, Glen Ames, and Philip Aaronson
Assigned to Yahoo
US Patent Application 20100007525
Published January 14, 2010
Filed July 9, 2008
Continue reading Forget Search, Yahoo May Start Helping You Find Parking Spaces
By Bill Slawski, on 1 08, 2010
Imagine that you are the owner of the Eugene O’Neill Theatre in Manhattan, New York, and you have a marquee banner that lets passersby know what performances are currently taking place on your stage, as well as posters advertising coming attractions.
Google has captured images of your theatre for Google Maps StreetViews, and have included a number of images that you may have uploaded via Google’s Local Business Center, or that others have taken of the area around the theater.
An image from Google’s Streetview of the theatre shows at least four billboard posters on the front wall of the building, which can be seen by viewers.
Continue reading How Google Might Enable Property Owner Advertising in Streetviews Images
By Bill Slawski, on 12 14, 2009
If you search for “pizza,” or “movie times,” or “division of motor vehicles,” there’s a chance that you might want to find information about where to get pizza near you, or to find what films that local movie theatres or showing, or find out more about driver’s licenses in your area. This is true even if you don’t include a specific location with your search.
The query term you used in your search might be considered to be a “regional sensitive query,” because you want to find information associated with a specific geographical location. That geographic location might be on a country or province level, within a specific region, at a state level, or even in a more narrow area such as within a specific city.
How would a search engine decide whether a specific search term might be “regionally sensitive,” or be a “global query” and have no specific local intent behind it?
A recent patent application from Yahoo explores a number of ways that look at user data related to searches to attempt to identify whether a query is regionally sensitive or doesn’t have some kind of location-based intent behind it.
Continue reading How Search Engines Might Divine the Intent behind Regional Queries vs. Global Queries
By Bill Slawski, on 12 10, 2009
A couple of days ago, the Official Google Blog announced a new way of learning more about locations that you come across, using mobile phones that are capable of taking pictures of, or scanning barcodes.
The post, Explore a whole new way to window shop, with Google and your mobile phone, describes how Google is sending out window decals to “more than 100,000 local businesses in the U.S.” that people can scan or take pictures of with their mobile phones to learn more about those businesses.
A patent application assigned to Google was published today which provides a fair amount of detail on how a system like this might work, and goes beyond the use of barcodes for businesses to include parks, government buildings, attractions, and landmarks, as seen in the image above from the patent filing.
Continue reading Google Barcodes and Place Rank Transforming Local Search
By Bill Slawski, on 7 13, 2009
Have you ever done a search on Google Local Search like “pizza near empire state building” where you enter a building or a landmark instead of a zip code, or a street, or city or state name?
Pizza Near Empire State Building
While many businesses, organizations, and points of interest (such as parks and schools) have very specific address information associated with them in Google’s Local Search database, people do sometimes want to use landmarks and other more ambiguous locations in their searches, such as neighborhoods (like “pizza in soho”).
A recent patent application from Google pinpoints some of the difficulties that Google’s Local Search may have with searches such as “restaurants near space needle,” where searchers may not be providing much actual geographic information in their searches. It also describes how the search engine might fill in the information it has about locations in its geographic database with user submitted data.
Continue reading Google Geocoding, Ambiguous Locations, and My Maps Submitted Data
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