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Originally Posted by jonn3
Interesting that is uses latitude and longitude - makes sense - but never would have occurred to me. There is another website I am familiar with but when you put in the zip code it will often suggest something 20 miles away and not in the town next to me - would be interesting to know what their search works on.
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A lot of sites use a 'geoip' database based on a zipcode. All the zipcodes are in a table along with the latitude and longitude. Usually they estimate your location based on your computer (or device's) IP address, then compare that with the zip code table's latitude/longitude combinations.
I used to live in a large zipcode where the center of it was miles away. Some of the sites actually didn't have my zipcode. They used my IP address to place me in Kansas (the center of the continental US?) instead of Texas. One placed me in New Jersey.
For CFS, I coded things to ask your browser for your latitude and longitude. Unfortunately, the 3rd-party back-end programming still relies on a 'geoip/zipcode' table. What this means is that our "Quick Search" doesn't work in most of the world and in some US zipcodes, too.