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US 7,743,048 B2Granted
System and method for providing a geographic search function
AssigneeMicrosoft Corporation
InventorLaura J. Baldwin
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A system and method are provided for implementing a geographic search mode in connection with a search engine. The method may include indexing geographic locations for resources available to the search engine in a search engine index. The method may additionally include determining a target location for a particular user upon receiving a user query from the particular user and searching the search engine index for geographic location matches matching the target location.
Claims20
A method for implementing a geographic search mode in connection with a search engine, the method comprising:
- indexing geographic locations for resources available to the search engine in a search engine index;
- determining a target location from one or more keywords in a query string submitted by a user to a search engine;
- identifying the target location as a geographic city;
- determining two or more alternative location cities within a pre-defined geographic radius around the geographic city with at least a minimum population of people;
- suggesting that a user limit a search for at least one of the one or more keywords to the two or more alternative cities;
- presenting a drop-down menu with the two or more alternative location cities arranged in alphabetic order;
- receiving an indication, by the user, to limit the search for the at least one of the one or more keywords one of the two or more alternative cities;
- searching web content for information relevant to the at least one of the one or more keywords and limited to the one of the two or more alternative cities;
- and
- transmitting the information.
7 more elements
A geographic search system for allowing a user to generate search results relevant to a target location, the system comprising:
- a geo-entity extractor for operating in conjunction with a crawler to crawl available information sources and extract location information;
- a geo-tagger for:
- (1) tagging and indexing information sources with extracted location information˜
- (2) appending a text indication indicative of a latitude-longitude centroid pinpoint to web documents that have been determined to have high-confidence geographic matches:
- one or more location determination components for determining a target location that is geographically located within a predetermined radius from a location identified in a query string submitted by a user to a search engine;
- determining a target location from one or more keywords in a query string submitted by a user to a search engine;
- identifying the target location as a geographic city;
- determining two or more alternative location cities within a pre-defined geographic radius around the geographic city with at least a minimum population of people;
- suggesting that a user limit a search for at least one of the one or more keywords to the two or more alternative cities;
- presenting a drop-down menu with the two or more alternative location cities arranged in alphabetic order,
- receiving an indication, by the user, to limit the search for the at least one of the one or more keywords one of the two or more alternative cities;
- searching web content for information relevant to the at least one of the one or more keywords and limited to the one of the two or more alternative cities;
- and transmitting the information.
10 more elements
A user interface system for implementing geographic search tools that search an index for geographic location matches, the user interface system comprising:
- a user-selectable local area option that prompts the geographic search tools to determine a user local area and search for indexed results in the determined local user area, wherein the user local area is determined by an IP address associated with a client computing device;
- indexing geographic locations for resources available to the search engine in a search engine index;
- determining a target location from one or more keywords in a query string submitted by a user to a search engine;
- identifying the target location as a geographic city;
- determining two or more alternative location cities within a pre-defined geographic radius around the geographic city with at least a minimum population of people;
- suggesting that a user limit a search for at least one of the one or more keywords to the two or more alternative cities;
- presenting a drop-down menu with the two or more alternative location cities arranged in alphabetic order,
- receiving an indication, by the user, to limit the search for the at least one of the one or more keywords one of the two or more alternative cities;
- searching web content for information relevant to the at least one of the one or more keywords and limited to the one of the two or more alternative cities;
- and transmitting the information.
7 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.