Google Suggest knows where you are

I don’t know how many times I’ve fired up Maps on my iPhone and searched for “coffee” to get the closest wifi hotspot. Working virtually means you often end up looking for the closest 'office' on the spur of the moment.

Last week, Google made life a little easier by adding location-aware search results to queries (provided I turn on “My Location” on the Google homepage screen on my iPhone. The same works on Android devices). Now, when I search for coffee from my phone, "Peet’s Coffee at 899 Santa Cruz Ave," situated four blocks away, shows up as the second result.

Today, that process got a little bit faster. Google Suggest is the name given to the phrases that pop up below the search text field when you start typing on Google, offering up what Google thinks you might be looking for in hopes of saving you the trouble of keying in the whole phrase. Now those suggested terms are also location-aware on iPhones and Android devices. If you type in “Muse” and your in Boston, google’s blog notes, then you’ll get things like “Museum of science boston” and “Museum of fine arts boston.”

This means that the next time I’m at a stop light and need an office fast, I’ll be able to get away with six clicks: “on,”, Google icon, “c” “o” “f” and then hit the suggested closest java shop.

The location-aware search results in general are a huge deal, since it means Google Ads can now be geo-targetted. If Starbucks is a little further away from me than Bill’s Café, the former can now pay to show up in the sponsored links… which means Google taps into the impulse buying market like never before.