You’re right. I extracted this code from an existing example and forgot to handle the geocoding within the method. The self.by_location method does the geolocation lookup if a string is passed.

I like your example. Very simple.

Here is my named scope:
named_scope :geocoded, lambda{ |origin, distance| distance_sql = self.distance_sql(MultiGeocoder.geocode(origin)); { :select => “businesses.*, #{distance_sql} as distance”, :conditions => “#{distance_sql} <= #{distance}" } }