Toward tighter integration of web search with a geographic information system

Integration of Web search with geographic information has recently attracted much attention. There are a number of local Web search systems enabling users to find location-specific Web content. In this paper, however, we point out that this integration is still at a superficial level. Most local Web search systems today only link local Web content to a map interface. They are extensions of a conventional stand-alone geographic information system (GIS), applied to a Web-based client-server architecture. In this paper, we discuss the directions available for tighter integration of Web search with a GIS, in terms of extraction, knowledge discovery, and presentation. We also describe implementations to support our argument that the integration must go beyond the simple map-and hyperlink architecture.