Google Maps Search 2.0

“Use maps to search, not just navigate”

The idea: I remember one night at 9pm asking myself “where can I get a HDMI cable right now”. Searching Google didn’t give me the answer. Searching Google Maps told me I had to walk a mile to best buy. But the next day I noticed that Rite Aid 100 yards from my apartment sold them. Huh. This was the kernel of an idea - that Google Maps could be a far more powerful search engine, especially for non-navigational queries - driving consumer adoption of commercial queries in Google Maps would in turn unlock a huge revenue potential in Google Maps ads (something that’s still anemic in Google today).

The idea I mocked up was basically a reverse web-index, indexing not just the local businesses but indexing their websites too and letting you do keyword search across it. So e.g. if you search for “lamb tagine” Google Maps should find that item on the restaurant menu (they do that a little bit today, but didn’t do this at all in 2012).

This is still not a solved problem today. For example, I search for Ethan Lipton on Google Maps and get a single result for Joe’s Pub where Ethan Lipton has played, despite the fact that he is about to play a gig at Barbes soon, near where I live.