San Francisco — Always on the move to empower its users around the world with something new, search giant Google on Monday said that it is going to begin adding a map of local findings to search results based on generic search terms such as “restaurant” or “dentist,” something that Google watchers have been buzzing about for months.
With the introduction of the service, which means that when a user searches for things such as restaurants or coffee shops, you do not have to specify your location on the search query to view search results specific to your geographic location.
How does Google Search do this? The Official Google Blog says, it estimates your location using user’s IP address. It matches this IP address to a broad geographical location and then selects the search results specific to the matched geographic location.
“In most cases, we connect your IP address to a broad geographical location. You can also specify your likely location using the ‘Change location’ link on the top right corner, above the map,” Google says in a blog post.
Google already displays this if you specify your location, such as when you type “restaurant.”
“We try to make our estimation as good as they can be so that whether you are shopping for [groceries], [sporting goods] or [flowers], or looking for your [bank], your [gym], or the [post office], you can just say what you want, and we will try to find it right where you are. You can also search for specific stores or street addresses near you, like [cornelia st cafe] in New York, for example.”
Paul Levine, the former general manager for Yahoo’s local search division, said in an online discussion last week that the practice has been around for years, and that the search engines will estimate a user’s location depending on their IP address, which is the string of numbers that identifies your computer to your Internet service provider. IP addresses tend to correspond to geographic areas.
Earlier, search engines have been worried that some people would be uncomfortable that Google or Yahoo or Microsoft could figure out their location.
That apprehension seems to be fading away as location-based services become more common.
“Google would not be doing this unless it was confident that it was right about what people want,” said Greg Sterling, of Sterling Market Intelligence.
Nevertheless, it is a simple search enhancement but could save you a lot of time when searching for area-specific information on Google search.