Librarian in Black Blog – Sarah Houghton

Google’s Local Search is now up on its website. It’s super fast, I have to give it that. For my simple test, I decided to search for shops that carried anime in my hometown of Hoffman Estates, Illinois. Surprise, there are none. But there are some close by–which is more than was there when I was growing up.

Like:

• the option to save your location for later searches

• the option to expand the search to 1, 5, 15, or 45 miles out from your location

Don’t like:

• it doesn’t tell you how many hits you got

• it definitely missed some businesses, and though it gives you the option to submit your own business, I guess I just question their data-pool
• the way the “related web pages” thing works–it often takes you to a review, another directory, and almost never directly to that business’s website

All that being said, it has potential, and I like it a lot better than what I’ve been using for business category searches (Anywho).