1. A method comprising: receiving a search request by at least one server computer, the search request identifying search criteria; cause, by the at least one server computer, a search of geographically referenced information using the search criteria to identify search results, the search results comprising a plurality of result items, each result item of the plurality having associated text for a display of the search results result items and having an associated location; for each result item of the plurality, the at least one server computer determining a distance of the result item from a user's location using the user's location and the result item's associated location; and causing, by the at least one server computer, the display of the search results, wherein the display of the search results comprises the text for each of the plurality of result items, and at least one appearance characteristic of the text varies for at least one result item of the search results based on the at least one result item's distance from the user's location, the result item's distance from the user's location is determined using the user's location and the at least one result item's associated location and one of the plurality of result items closest in distance to the user's location relative to other ones of the plurality of result items is displayed more prominently than the other ones of the plurality of result items, wherein the at least one appearance characteristic is selected from the group consisting of font size, font style, color, shading, three-dimensional height, associated features, and animation.
7. The method of claim 1 , wherein the at least one appearance characteristic of the text of the at least one result item of the displayed search results varies based on a predetermined distance and the result item's distance from the user's location.