Location-Based Search Engines Tasks and Capabilities: A Comparative Study

Location-based web searching is one of the popular tasks expected from the search engines. A location-based query consists of a topic and a reference location. Unlike general web search, in location-based search it is expected to find and rank documents which are not only related to the query topic but also geographically related to the location which the query is associated with. There are several issues for developing effective geographic search engines and so far, no global location-based search engine has been reported. Location ambiguity, lack of geographic information on web pages, language-based and country-dependent addressing styles, and multiple locations related to a single web resource are notable difficulties. Search engine companies have started to develop and offer location-based services. However, they are still geographically limited and have not become as successful and popular as general search engines. This paper reviews the architecture and tasks of location-based search engines and compares the capabilities, functionalities and coverage of the current geographic search engines with a user-oriented approach.