About Never-Search for Golf

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Keith Kreft began his engineering career in the automotive service industry in 1973 developing engine and exhaust analyzers. As Vice President of Engineering for the Diagnostics division of Snap-on Tools, he envisioned and guided the development of Snap-on’s most successful line of hand-held diagnostic products. He envisioned integratiing information within the instrumentation, saving the technicians time from having to search for a service repair manual in the shop.  During his time working in the automotive service industry, he was awarded 11 patents in the area of Automotive System Testing. 

While regularly traveling on business,  Keith was frustrated by the overall lack of quality in the information shown on travel maps.  Places were missing or mapped to incorrect locations.  

This started when he was still with Snap-on Tools, often traveling to Detroit to meet with car manufacturers. Having a Starbucks or Pete's before his first morning meeting was a necessity. He had installed one of the most popular travel maps on his laptop, specifically to find locations of places, like coffee shops, and restaurants in unfamiliar cities. Too many times, he would drive to a mapped Starbucks location, and not find a trace of the coffee shop. Then that night on his way back to the hotel, pass one that wasn't on the map.

An avid golfer, he was also dismayed that the travel map he used could show the same golf course in multiple locations, often including the utility entrance of the course, instead of the golf course’s actual entrance.  The map also did not include any qualifying information on the courses. Was it worth playing, or worthy of entertaining a client? Immediately, he saw an opportunity to add a “Snap-on” level of quality to these maps by developing improved methods of collecting, organizing, updating, and displaying points of interest on these maps.  His innovative concept of integrating qualitative information with the travel map, eliminated the ping-ponging between seeing various locations of places on the map, and then having to search for qualifying information on each one,  saving time and frustration.  While golf courses were the anchor for the map, the travel map also included Airports, Coffee Houses, Great Places to Eat (Before You Die) (selected restaurants), Choice Hotels and Camping.

In 2003, he founded Never-Search, and directed the development of an innovative mapping system, which among other things, employed a hierarchical folder system to control the display of qualitative information on points of interest, and the ability of displaying completely different types of points of interest on the same map, simultaneously; i.e. coffee shops and golf courses.  

He currently holds 9 patents in the area of Information Mapping. The patents include;

Patent 7,373,244, Issued 5/13/2008 

Patent 7,388,519, Issued 6/17/2008

Patent 8,219,318, Issued 7/10/2012

Patent 9,152,981, Issued 10/6/2015

Patent 9,177,330, Issued 11/3/2015

Patent 9,599,479 Issued March 21, 2017

Patent 10,509,810 Issued December 17, 2019

Patent 11,086,910 Issued August 10, 2021

Patent 11,372,903 Issued June 28, 2022

Patent Pending ,Pub. No. US-20220292118-A1