when to use "near" and when to use "close"

0 Your sentences are synonymous. The words have the same meaning, but I suspect that they occasionally collocate idiomatically-- unfortunately, none of these springs to mind at the moment.02br
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I agree with Mister Micawber, that the two sentence have same meaning, but I feel "near" is not a good choice in the following situation.

Suppose you are talking to someone inside the store itself. In such case I would prefer "It is close to the store". I am not sure if it would be right to say "It is near the store".

SG

I suppose that if I were actually in the ABC store, I would say 'it's near here' or 'it's close to here' or 'it's nearby'. If I were not in the ABC store, but a distance away, I would say 'it's near the ABC store' or 'it's close to the ABC store'.

There may be individual or regional variation in preference.

I, like Mr M, believe there are times when one or the other wouldn't work. My guess [though I could be wrong] is that 'close to' is more common in casual speech.

Close also has connotations of mental empathy. For example:

"She's my sister and I feel very close to her, although she lives in London".

And physical distance:

"She's quite fat and I'm too close to her".