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<DIV><FONT size=2>>I would like to talk about the location of the person
making the search versus >the location of the product or service
provider</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 size=2>Geographic/Spatial queries are a
well-researched topic in the database literature. Free text retrieval is
definitely a weak approach, though people attempt it by using thesaurus
facilities to represent the structure of a gazetteer. In most of the
practical systems I have seen, spatial query is done using postal codes: the
system needs knowledge of which postal districts are </FONT><FONT
size=2>near each other. (We also use such techniques for scheduling the
itinerary of service engineers).</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>>A hotel room is a 'chambre' in french. If I search for
a hotel room in Italy, I>don't know the word for room in
italian...</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 size=2>Multilingual search is well researched and
seems to work reasonably well. The more difficult problem is to distinguish
agencies that can book you a hotel room from newsletter articles by people
enthusing what a wonderful hotel room they were staying in: I think this is
why there will always be added value in manual categorization and indexing
services.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>Mike Kay</FONT></DIV>
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