geo-search-location-based-results-for-site-search
DESCRIPTION
Geo-Search: Serving Location Based Search Results for Onsite Search. How Lokku's geo-coding and geo-build skills provide forward geocoding for address data to enable onsite location based search results that allow users to search for a place using their natural language for places, such as streets and colloquial names. How Lokku's geocoder can help provide more accurate location based search results for onsite searchTRANSCRIPT
Geo-Search: Serving Location Based Search Results for Onsite Search
• 8+ years indexing up to 10m properties every day• Returning +1.3m location based search results daily• Across 8 countries in 6 languages
Our Geo-Search Experience is…
A Simplified View Step 1…GEO-BUILD
Map and hierarchical address data is coded with the estimated long/lat for place names
A Simplified View Step 2…
GEO-CODE
Each propertylisting is geocodedwith a long/latassigned with a degreeof confidence basedon available addressdata
GEO-BUILDMap and hierarchical address data is coded with the estimated long/lat for place names
A Simplified View Step 3…
User inputsa geo-specificsearch query such asflat near Tooley Street, SE1
USER QUERY
GEO-CODE
Each propertylisting is geocodedwith a long/latassigned with a degreeof confidence basedon available addressdata
GEO-BUILDMap and hierarchical address data is coded with the estimated long/lat for place names
A Simplified View Step 4…
User inputsa geo-specificsearch query such asflat near Tooley Street, SE1
USER QUERY
GEO-CODE
Each propertylisting is geocodedwith a long/latassigned with a degreeof confidence basedon available addressdata
The search queryis interpreted to return relevant properties accordingto long/lat witha map and relevantlocal information
SEARCH RESULTS
GEO-BUILDMap and hierarchical address data is coded with the estimated long/lat for place names
But It’s Not So Simple…
Property Listing Data we receive can..• Be incomplete (missing fields)• Be ambiguous (duplicates and homonyms)• Contain errors • Wrong street, postcode or region combinations• Mis-spellings or typos etc.
This feed has contradictory information i.e. inaccurate details received from the portal
Geocoding Needs …
Good Map DataBUTMap Data can be:• Very expensive• Of varying quality• Unavailable in places like India and Brazil
And A Good Geocoder…
is often …• Very expensive• Requires good source input data• Of varying accuracy• Subject to restrictive terms of use and rate
limits
See also: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jan/13/google-maps-geocoder
What We Do Is…
Geocode using our proprietary software and tools• Using OpenStreetMap• Using other open data sources• Layering several different open and proprietary
data sets to match a place to a long/lat (termed forward geocoding) based on available address data
• Attach degrees of confidence to the match
But Then We Get User Queries…
Searchers don’t agree on the name for a place
VS
Use colloquial, not official names
Misspell or mistype names
Have different ideas of what near to.. means And so on…
Use abbreviations
Across Different Countries…
Local search terms – like ‘Kietz’ which is used for aneighbourhood in Berlin or North Germany
The same place can have different names in different local languages (e.g. Catalan vs Castilian)
And so on…
isAlso Basque, Galician, Corsican etc. or disputed territories
Local search habits like using car number plates in Germany
Some countries have many towns with the same name
So We…Match user searches with places based on long/lat
• Using up to 15 different filters including common typos
• Serve pages of listings with geo coordinates near to the searched for place
• Provide further heuristic filters for house type,price, etc.
Backed by a continual programme of testing and refining our geocoding accuracy
A more technical view…
This Could Be Relevant To You …
If your users search for • ‘Hotel near …’• ‘Supermarket near …’• ‘Click and Collect near …’ • ‘Restaurant near…’ etc.
• Using colloquial names or ambiguous queries or searches near ‘landmarks’ or ‘streets’ etc.
• And your current solution only accepts towns or postcodes and/or returns approximate answers
We Could Help..
Improve user satisfaction with your site search by: • Providing access to our geocoding technology• To forward geocode site searches and match these
to the relevant results• Enabling you to return more relevant search
results for users that are searching using language that makes sense to them
A couple of comments…
• We are experts in forward geocoding names or street addresses to a long/lat
• BUT NOT in reverse geocoding names or street address from a long/lat
• We can share our expertise across the 8 countries where Nestoria currently operates and also use these skills for other countries
Some Terminology…
• Geocoding (or forward geo-coding) is the process of finding associated geographic coordinates (often expressed as latitude and longitude) from other geographic data, such as street addresses, or ZIP codes (postal codes)*
• Reverse geocoding is the opposite: finding an associated textual location such as a street address, from geographic coordinates*
• A geocoder is a piece of software or a (web) service that helps in this process*
• Our geo-build is the process by which map data and hierarchical address data (street, town, province…) is entered into a database and coded to return the estimated geographic coordinates for search queries
*Wikipedia
Contact Us
Contact: [email protected]
Unit 1, 82 Clerkenwell RoadLondon EC1M 5RFUnited Kingdom
lat/long: 51.52262, -0.10252
http://www.lokku.com
© OpenStreetMap contributors, map by MapQuest
Appendix
Parent company of OpenCage Data and property search engine Nestoria
Founded 2006 by 2 senior Yahoo! Search Executives
Serving clients globally from Clerkenwell, London
Team of 15 - experts in aggregation, all things geo, local search (ex. Yahoo!, Nokia)
UK Open Data Institute Member
Organize #geomob - quarterly meetup of location based service developershttp://geomobldn.org
Learn more: http://www.lokku.com
Residential property search engine
Operates in 8 markets: Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, India, Italy, Spain, UK
3 million unique users searching for >10 million places every month
Extensive experience in geocoding, local search, local SEM
First-mover in using OSM as alternative to Google Maps: http://bit.ly/1a0sopt
Learn more: http://www.nestoria.com
Clients who trust Lokku
The Free Wiki World Map
Collaborative project to create a free, editable map of the world
Started in 2004 by Steve Coast in London
1.4 million registered participants
2+ billion data points, growing continually
Data available under Open Data Commons Open Database License (ODbL).http://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright
Learn more: http://www.openstreetmap.org/about
OpenStreetMap