Location is one of the rising trends in the mobile industry at the moment. In a world where relevant content and information is starting to become more important, location based technology is a great enabler to relevant content and information. Imagine being able to find and locate almost anything you are looking for, all from your mobile handset.
The Case: John Needs Sushi
I’ll quickly run through a case scenario. John, who travels a lot, has found himself in a town he has never been to before. He has no idea where anything is and all he has is his mobile handset. He is hungry and in the mood for Sushi, and he is not sure if there is a Sushi restaurant nearby.
John grabs his mobile handset and types in “sushi”, using CellID technology his location is automatically determined. After John has clicked the “search” button, the results are shown on a map and John can now find the nearest Sushi restaurant. He can also request directions to the address of the restaurant.
Types of Location Based Search
In terms of structuring location based search results, I have identified two types. These types depend on the type of search you are performing.
- Radial Search
If a user performs a search for something nearby, then a radial search is performed. The radius can be set to a default by the search engine or changed by the user. Lets assume the default radius is 5km, if no results are returned within 5km then the search engine will increase the radius until it finds results. The search engine will return no results within 5km, however display that there x results within ykm radius. The nearest results would then be the most relevant and important in this case. - Point-to-Point Search
If a user is traveling or looking for directions from Point A to Point B, then a point-to-point search is performed where the results are confined to anything between the two points. The challenge with this type of search is either to return the results from all possible routes or ask the user to define one route. Once the route has been determined, the search engine can then perform the search within the selected constraints.
Location Based Advertising
Why is location based advertising so special? Once again, it ties in with being able to target people who looking for specific information at or withing a specific location. Therefore if advertising is location relevant or specific, it has a greater chance of being more relevant to the person. Even if they are not performing a search, information that is location specific to the person’s current position can be just as relevant.
Google – Search with My Location
Yip – I’m so glad I finally found a post of someone advocating location based searches and more important, location relevant searches.
One thing that strikes me about South African advertising, web and mobile based, is that we have a long way to go to make our ads intelligent. Which should not really be such a big issue.
If you think about it, even if by means of a crude tagging system, one should be able to categorize your products by location and make it evolve organically from there, which would certainly be just as important in some cases as the product being relevant itself.
Why would you need a plumber in Cape Town if you live up in Joburg?
I really enjoyed the UK location based sites and that sparked the idea for my site about 4 years ago, unfortunately I couldn’t find the right geocoding services available for SA until recently.
I have now launched a location based directory Aroundme (www.aroundme.co.za) and its mobile counter-part m.aroundme.co.za and I am looking for feedback and suggestions.