[Geowanking] local web search stats

[Gregory Yetman]

Hi,

I've often heard the quote that 80% of all data can be georeferenced. 
I've never found a source that I can cite for this though. Google turns up:

http://gbifdemo.utu.fi/approach/meeting_needs.htm

and

http://gislab.elfak.ni.ac.yu/leni/Radovi/JEC_GI97D_ps.pdf

among others but no peer-reviewed articles exist that I know of.

More to the point, people have pointed out that while much information 
can be georeferenced, doing so is not always useful. Any physical object 
on the planet, and thus any information about a given object, can be 
georeferenced. What use is it to know the coordinates of a soccer ball 
during a game? Or the books on a library shelf? Knowing the location of 
the library may be important, or how to request a book, but the actual 
book location (or tagging the reference to the book) is probably not of 
much use. On the other hand, you cannot georeference a piece of 
information like a legal ruling. Having good boundaries for where the 
legal ruling is enforceable can be quite useful though!

My 2¢...

Greg

Anselm Hook wrote:

>Anybody have any statistics to nail down how much human information is
>about location? - or say how much day-to-day conversation involves
>location? - I imagine it is something like 80%.
>
> - a
>
>On Wed, 21 Sep 2005, Martin Tomko wrote:
>
>  
>
>>Dear List,
>>some time ago I found a statistic about what percentage of search on the
>>Web is local in nature. Extensive googling did not find me the article
>>again. MEa culpa, I did not bookmark it (or am I lost in my bookmarks? :))
>>Can anyone point me to a reliable articel (even better, a paper?) I
>>remember it was around 35-40%... Ah well, back to google...
>>Thanks
>>Martin
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>>
>
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-- 
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Gregory Yetman
Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN)
Columbia University
URL: http://www.ciesin.columbia.edu/
e-mail: gyetman (at) ciesin.columbia.edu
tel: (845) 365-8982
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