Searching the Web using a map

Most Internet search engines are keyword-based. They are not efficient for the queries where geographical location is important, such as finding hotels within an area or close to a place of interest. A natural interface for spatial searching is a map, which can be used not only to display locations of search results but also to assist forming search conditions. A map-based search engine requires a well-designed visual interface that is intuitive to use yet flexible and expressive enough to support various types of spatial queries as well as aspatial queries. Similar to hyperlinks for text and images in an HTML page, spatial objects in a map should support hyperlinks. Such an interface needs to be scalable with the size of the geographical regions and the number of Web sites it covers. In spite of handling typically a very large amount of spatial data, a map-based search interface should meet the expectation of fast response time for interactive applications. We discuss general requirements and the design for a new map-based Web search interface, and present a prototype for the University of Queensland.