Brookline Condominiums

"I think everyone in New York defines neighborhoods in slightly different ways. Some neighborhoods are literally defined by a couple of blocks," said Lockhart Steele, founder and publisher of the Curbed.com blog site.

Curbed.com readers can choose to read postings that are specific to neighborhoods. The site identifies 14 Manhattan neighborhood areas, for example, and also includes information categorized by neighborhood in Brooklyn and Queens.

Earlier this year, Curbed.com hosted a light-hearted neighborhood-naming contest, dubbed "'Hoodwinked." The winner pitched the name "RAMBO (Right After the Manhattan Bridge Overpass)" for a neighborhood stretching between Tillary Street and York Street, north of the Manhattan Bridge.

There is a general trend, Steele said, to provide more focused information online. "You can always get more detailed. There is the question of: 'Do readers want to view everything?'" For editorial purposes, Steele said that he adopted fairly rigid neighborhood boundaries for Curbed.com.

"I think neighborhood-specific search...is going to be a pretty big deal," and real estate companies have already inquired about placing advertisements on neighborhood-specific pages at his blog site, Steele said. "Drill-down search is presumably one of the better ways to find really qualified leads." While neighborhood search is one potential avenue for expanding local search capabilities, Steele said innovation in search technologies is not a one-way street. "I don't believe search is moving in any one direction.