That’s not a figurative title; visitors to AskCity can use the drawing tools to select a section of a city, and then search only within that drawn boundary.
The AskCity website offers Ask’s take on local search. One of their launch features offered a drawing palette, where someone could mark up a map in whatever manner they liked, and send the map with that markup to other people.
As the Ask Blog noted, the drawing feature has been enhanced with a little more interactivity:
But now, you can use those drawing tools to focus your search on a specific area. Just draw your shape around the area you want to search and click on the magnifying glass to open a search window.
The square, circle and polygon tools let you create the shape you’ll search within.
The line tool lets you search a single street, no matter how long or short it is.
As an example of the new feature’s utility, Ask described how someone might remember a business being at an intersection, but doesn’t recall the name of the place. By circling the intersection and searching for the type of business, the query returns results for that circled area matching the request.
The search works in aerial and map views, giving users a choice in seeing the results in the view they prefer. AskCity’s update has already gathered some plaudits, with Marshall Kirkpatrick wondering why Ask is so far back in search market share when they have products like this available.
Good question.
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