90% Crud

Google maps the real world to the web

While sites like GeoURL have been providing location to website matching for a while now, Google has gotten into the action with it's beta Search by Location. It appears to be based on the winning entry by Daniel Egnor in the 2002 Google Programming Contest.

The way it works is by looking for addresses on websites and using that address as the location of the website. By contrast, GeoURL has users add a meta tag that tells its search engine where your site is. The benefit of the prior method is that you probably don't have to do anything different. The shortcoming is that if Google can't index your address, it can't find you, as Stephen pointed out.

An example search that worked for me is Pizza in 48103, although I'm sure there are more clever searches out there. Be sure to check out the rest of Google Labs while you're there, they usually have some good stuff brewing.