In the end, question is how to implement it? Bias towards current location by default? That's essentially covered already via Main menu/Nearby search and default settings.

I presume that's what is done in Saera when you search for directions via the used provider. Does that provider understand "starbucks in london"? and which london is used then (https://londonist.com/london/feature...t-the-london)?

There are many issues showing up when you start thinking about it and I haven't got any great idea on how to make it more "natural". I have heard complaints, but not much in terms of constructive suggestions that would help to resolve it. So far, related to search, was a more complicated option suggested where the users will specify country, town, street, ... to remove ambiguity of the parsing (in other words: to be able to choose london), but for merging Nearby and Global search no great idea was suggested. As for sorting by distance and title hit - its hard to figure out penalty coefficients.