I remain obsessed with the idea of meaningfully combining authoritative data with search to make richer results. When I can do it with local search, it’s all the more satisfying.

Today’s Gizmo combines the authority of the FCC TV license database with local news search. And when I say local, I mean, like, a street.

Here’s how StreetScoop Local News Search works:

– Enter an address in the United States

– The address is converted to latitude/longitude

– A dataset is consulted to find the nearest large city to that address (I had to customize a dataset I found online, thank you SimpleMaps)

– That city name is searched in the FCC’s TV permit database and the domain names of local TV stations are aggregated into a query string

– The query string along with the street name are bundled into a Google search, which opens in a new window.

Now that’s what I call local news search!

Of course, not every street in the country is going to get mentioned in the news and the address search is finicky, but wow, some of the results are amazing. Just imagine if I had access to more authoritative news source databases. Sigh.