INFORMATION SEARCH AND RETRIEVAL WITH GEOGRAPHICAL COORDINATES

An information search and retrieval process using geographical coordinates. An index of coordinates is built for a plurality of text based references, resources or sites, each having a set of said coordinates. A user inquiry is accepted containing a text reference. The text reference specified in the user inquiry is converted to a set of coordinates. A search is thereafter conducted against the index of coordinates based on the converted coordinates of the user inquiry reference. All information retrieved from the search is returned in a text based format.