Looks like Google has rolled out their local search. Type in what you want to find, along with an address: pizza hartford, vt. The results are shown in distance order and span geopolitical boundaries (ie. isn't a keyword search by city or state). You can click through to get a map.
You got this to work? "pizza west lebanon, nh" gets NH sites for at least the first fifty hits. It should have picked up C&S Pizza in WRJ, VT well before southern NH pizza joints!
Hey, welcome to the world of geographical searching and maps! ":^)
Everyone assumes that since _they_ know about a road, business, feature, etc... it should be on a map or in a database. Just doesn't happen that way.
Does C&S have a web site? Google is cross indexing spidered data with Yellow Pages so if they aren't in both they won't show up.
Hey, at least you show up as the first "ted west lebanon, nh" although not in the local results (since you aren't in the yellow pages either).
C&S can send their info to google for yellow page inclusion:
http://www.google.com/help/faq_local.html
It's too bad they only do yellow pages for the local search. As it is I can't search for "Ted" in Hanover, nh and find you, I have to know which town you are in (and you have to have the address on your web page).
No website for "C and S Pizza", their proper name, but Google finds a phone listing and maps for them. Is a website required for the Google geo search?
The first "Ted" & "West Lebanon" connection found by Goggle is tenuous -- the two phrases exist on the same page but are not connected. They got lucky! ;-) I may very well live in some other town that I have never published to the Net....
This is a great idea. I wish we'd thought of it at VCNT! ;^)