Google Maps is great for finding a business you know the name of in a location you're not certain of, but what if you want to find out the opposite: what businesses are in a certain location?

There should be a reverse-lookup feature that allows you to see ALL listed businesses in the immediate vicinty of a given address, marked or called out on the map.

This would have several applications:

- Finding hard-to-locate addresses via landmarks ("It's at 1422 Main" might not be useful if it's in an area with poorly marked addresses, but looking it up and discovering that 1400 Main is a Grandma's Diner might be very useful - the sign would be easier to find.)

- Getting a sense of an area without having to walk it extensively

As it is, you can get ... fairly decent results by searching for "[type of business] near [address]" if you're looking for anything in a general category near somewhere, but it would be nice to be able to find absolutely everything.
-- gisho, Jun 28 2006

random, halfbakery