Mobilemaps is a nearby engine, which lets users physically locate information.

One important use of the nearby engine is to find relevant local Web pages and plot their positions on a map of the local area. For example, entering "Los Angeles airport hotel" returns a map of Los Angeles with visual links to all Web pages that match the keywords "airport" and "hotel".

Mobilemaps nearby engine offers a unique combination of keyword and spatial indexing that differentiates it from both search-engines, which have no knowledge of location; and map-servers, which have no ability to Web search.

• Helps users find local information.

• Immediately shows users where their search-results are located.

• Generates new revenue from NearbyAds.

• Full Keyword Indexing so users can find results instantly from flexible keyword inputs, instead of selecting from confusing or limited subject categories.

• Full Spatial Indexing so that all the closest results are obtained irrespective of arbitrary country/city/town/zip/postcode boundaries.

• Any Open-GIS compatible map-server or web-service may supply maps for use with Mobilemaps. There may be no need to change an existing map supplier or map server.

1. Mobilemaps searching California, USA:
   
   

   Map-server	Open source Mapserver, map data from U.S. Census Bureau
   Webpage data	Spidered with Mobilemaps Spider

   
   
   My Address
   
   
   
2. Mobilemaps integrated with an existing text search:
   
   This configuration is useful for an existing search service seeking to gently introduce Mobilemaps. Users carry out an ordinary text-search as usual, but a link to the Mobilemaps nearby engine is added to the search results page when the users' inputs indicate a location.
   
   
   
   Click here to see a larger image.

• Requirements: MySQL and Perl.
• Recommendations: Apache and Mapserver.