March 22nd, 2008
New Google Mobile feature lets you search without typing
Google added a new entry into their robots.txt file — one way you can keep tabs on what Google doesn’t want to see. The new entry that forbids crawlers from seeing http://www.google.com/m/lcb made me naturally curious.
The new feature, that from what I can tell is new, lets you browse through categories of businesses without you having to type a word on your mobile device. For the life of me, I can’t figure out what “lcb” means, but everything is broken down into categories — there is even one for “Googleplex”. Strange, and pretty useless if you don’t live in Mountain View California.
The feature works pretty well, but it would be even better if it could somehow figure out your exact location rather than simply the city. This way it could browse real businesses that are close to you rather than everything in the entire city. Maybe if you pass in some weird parameters with latitude and longitude it will do exactly that, but I can’t confirm that at the moment.
Since this feature probably isn’t “finished” yet, I’ll leave most judgment out of this article, but it is promising. What do you think?
Garett Rogers is employed as a programmer for iQmetrix, which specializes in retail management software for the cellular and electronics industry. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
