Geolocalization, Geolocalisation, Geolocation?
For a while I’ve been wondering which one (if any) of these terms is proper english. The first two ones appeal to French speakers like I am (the French word being “Géolocalisation”), but it turns out they’re as far from Shakespeare’s language as it could get. On the other hand, the third one, Geolocation, is designated by Google, and therefore by the Wisdom of the Crowds, as the proper one 
Here at MapMyGlobe, we use a tiny bit of IP geolocation (or more accurately, we’ll use it in the next release) to position a pin for the user when he creates his own profile page.
IP Geolocation is also a very important piece of my other project, MapMySearch, a mashup that enables you to locate on a map, the servers hosting the top results of your search in Google.
January 8th, 2009 at 7:07 am
Thanks for clearing this up. I think with a quick glance in the translation dictionary, it’s easy to think that the words are the same since they resemble each other so closely.
June 4th, 2010 at 4:10 am
Yes, a common mistake (even among native English speakers!).
Localize/localise means “to assign or limit to a place” (e.g. localized pain = douleur localisée), whereas
Locate means “to situate, to find the position of, to find or pinpoint” when transitive (e.g. My SatNav located the shop quickly),
and “to establish oneself in residence or business in an area” when intransitive (e.g. he located to LA, increasingly “relocated” nowadays).
As for “-ize”/”-ise”, the rule is as follows:
“-ize” is mandatory in American spelling, and optional in British spelling (most British publishers prefer “-ise”, Oxford University Press and a few other leading publishers prefer “-ize”, for perfectly valid etymological reasons I won’t go into here but am happy to expand on if you wish).
June 22nd, 2010 at 10:51 am
Wow! Thanks for the very thorough explanation, Richard!
August 28th, 2010 at 6:45 am
just wanted to drop a comment and say I’m feelin’ what you’re thinkin’! You’ve got some valid arguments and while I don’t disagree with everything you’ve said I think you make a strong case. Keep up the good work ‘cus I’ll be checkin’ up on you later. You’re on my radar now and I’m interested to see what’s next.
August 29th, 2010 at 4:46 pm
Hello, I was reasearching this last Friday and I just wanted to say your blog has clarified a few issues for me- thanks