The New Shape of Local Search

What, you think we’d launch an incomparable, doors-blowing product like AskCity and just
leave it out there? We’ve been whipping up a fresh batch of upgrades, and are ready to announce the latest: search-enabled drawing tools.

If you’ve used AskCity already (or read our launch
announcement), you know that it incorporates a drawing palette.

You can mark up any map with lines, circles, polygons, etc. and send the marked-up
map to friends.

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.

You can even use the shapes to outline several areas, and do separate searches
on each. It’s a handy tool for searching when you know what area you’re looking
in, but don’t know the name of what you’re looking for.

Circling the Perfect Bean

Say a friend tells you about a great but hard-to-find coffee place–but all
she remembers is that it’s at the intersection of Gough & Fell Streets.
So you circle the intersection and search it:

AskCity returns two options within the area you’ve circled…

…and by using AskCity’s close-up and aerial photo functions, you see that
one option is right on Gough Street…and the other is on Linden, a tiny
side-street just off the intersection. Hard to find? Not anymore.

We search-enabled the AskCity drawing tools to make your local searches quicker,
more accurate, and in a lot of cases, easier. Give
it a try and let us know what you think!

–The AskCity Team