Minimongo doesn't provide $geoNear functionality, so if this is a search requirement then it has to be done on the server.
This leads to a problem when the local collection contains results from multiple publications, since there's no way to extract the results from the $geoNear search by supplying the same search criterea to the local collection as were used when publishing.
Using separate local collections for each search might help in some cases, but in my case the problem doesn't actually come from multiple publications for different purposes, but actually from using the subscriptions manager to cache recent subscriptions and avoid sending repeated data down the line.
Can anyone suggest a cunning solution to this issue?