Using place-names to find profiles

Dan - you're right, but it's more than that.

Springfield Illinois vs Springfield IL (Google will at least incorporate both), or a town of 'Springfield IL' (with everything strung together in one field - I've found this is common). Often, a town of IL, if not precisely known.

We're not consistent with entering the locations, so you can never expect too much from any type of search. At most, Geni search would simply cause a different set of problems compared to Google search.

A different set of problems, plus an actual incentive to fix them ;)

Elaine: as long as those examples you cite are all from the same time period, those can be dealt with. Those other situations (time, context, typos-that-appear-correct) are much more difficult.

Another problem -- names spelled differently in various eras.

BUT, the reason i asked about it, is that i help maintain a very large commercial database, and i find it easy to sort by nation, by state, and by city (as long as spelled correctly).

Hi, Catherine ... the problem you mention is part & parcel of the 'time' problem -- i.e. historical names problem.

One really needs a location name geo-database which is also indexed by time. With 'aliases' (Also Known As) indexes too,

Ideally, one could enter a 'unique enough' partial name & a date to get back the full contextual historical name for that time.

The Google location lookup (e.g. via the API) is great for modern-day locations; it just needs a time-dimension added. <smile>

Dan, you and i think exactly alike! Of course entering in the variants takes time, but it's a snap when the geo-coordinates are known. It would be a costly project or require lots of volunteers, but Wikipedia is close to being done with the geo-location data for almost every town, so ... why not?