Indexing documents according to geographical relevance
AssigneeGoogle Inc.
InventorDaniel Egnor
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A local search engine efficiently indexes documents relevant to a geographical area by indexing, for each document, multiple location identifiers that collectively define an aggregate geographic region. When creating the index, the search engine may determine a set of geographical areas surrounding a geographical area relevant to a document and associate references to the set of geographical areas with the document index.
Claims24
A method for indexing a document comprising:
- determining a location associated with the document;
- determining a plurality of locations surrounding the location associated with the document;
- and
- indexing the document to include a reference to the location and the plurality of locations surrounding the location.
A search engine comprising:
- means for storing a document index;
- means for determining a location associated with a document;
- means for determining a plurality of locations surrounding the location associated with the document;
- and
- means for indexing the document to include a reference to the location and the plurality of locations in the document index.
A method for indexing a document comprising:
- identifying a document having relevance to a first geographical area;
- determining a set of geographical areas surrounding the first geographical area;
- and
- associating references to the first geographical area and the set of geographical areas with the document;
- and
- indexing the document with the associated references.
A computer-readable medium containing programming instructions for execution by a processor, the computer-readable medium comprising:
- programming instructions for identifying a document having relevance to a first geographical area;
- programming instructions for determining a set of geographical areas surrounding the first geographical area;
- and
- programming instructions for associating references to the first geographical area and the set of geographical areas with an index that includes terms from the document.
A method of performing a search comprising:
- receiving a search query associated with a geographic region;
- determining a location identifier associated with the geographic region;
- and
- performing a search for documents relevant to the search query based on a comparison of the search query and the location identifier to a document index.
A search system comprising:
- a search engine to:
- receive a search query that includes search terms and an indication of a desired geographical region;
- determine a location identifier associated with the desired geographic region;
- modify the search query by appending the location identifier to the search query;
- and
- perform a search for documents relevant to the search query based on a comparison of the modified search query to a document index that associates a plurality of location identifiers to each geographically relevant document in the index.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.