Searching based on your location is patented?

It seems that a company called Geomas is the proud holder of a patent on location based web searching. Here is a link to the patent: Internet organizer for accessing geographically and topically based information
Why is this patentable? It seems pretty obvious that in any search system people would want to be able to search based on location. But it apparently wasn't to the patent office. So now the company has raised 20 million and is suing Verizon for putting its phone books online in a searchable format. I'm sure that if they win, there will be plenty of lawsuits against pretty much any search engine out there that lets you search using location as a criteria.

Via Wired: Patent Holder Sues Verizon, Claims to Own Location-Based Search