The product team is proud to announce the integration of Loki, a location based search utility that allows us to find you with one click of a button and display local businesses that are closest to you. Loki is developed by our good friends over at Skyhook Wireless.

Here is an example of how this works on CitySquares.com. Let’s say you are on your laptop having a cup of coffee at True Grounds in Ball Square, Somerville and you wanted to find a flower shop so you could surprise your significant other with a gift. The thing is, you may not know where the closest flower shop is. What you would do is go to CitySquares and, providing you have Loki installed on your browser, you’d click the “Find me with Loki” button on the navigation bar. See screenshot below.

Loki then finds you, and pretty darn close to your precise location. That information is then sent to CitySquares’ search engine and you’ll taken to a business results page based on your Loki location. So it actually finds where you are and shows you what’s nearby! You can then search for “flower shops” or browse to florists with our useful faceted search feature and you will find that Capelos Floral Design is right down the street. Not bad huh? And this is just the beginning of our location based offerings, there’s more to come.

To make this all happen you do need to download and install Loki on your laptop or desktop computer. Once you’ve enabled Loki you may travel all over the Boston area and find the businesses closest to where you are.

In addition to the Loki integration we’ve really spiced up our city and neighborhood homepages with more useful features such as listing local coupons and special deals in each neighborhood. You can also now read the latest reviews for businesses on the homepage or jump to different business categories without having to navigate to the businesses page.

We are working hard to make your experience on CitySquares a fun and easy way to find local businesses and events in your neighborhood. As always feel free to ping me if you have any thoughts or feedback.

-Bob

Bob Leland is Co-Founder and VP Product at CitySquares. Email this author | See all posts by Bob Leland

Tags | Coupons, location, loki, skyhook wireless