This new online version of the well-known Columbia Gazetteer of the World is a searchable collection of names, descriptions, and physical characteristics of more than 165,000 global places. Starting in July 2001, updating will occur monthly.
Plans are for maps, population density, and rate of growth to be added in the next three years.
The Gazetteer can be searched by place name, word, or type of place. Searching by place name is intuitive, and the results list can be evaluated quickly thanks to identifying labels. Searching by type of place can produce misleading results. In a search for a list of mountains in Japan, Mount Fuji is absent in the results. The Encyclopedia Britannica online offers similar information for many geographic entities.