Method of conducting searches on the internet to obtain selected information on local entities and provide for searching the data in a way that lists local businesses at the top of the results

A method of conducting a search comprising:

• a. set the number of rows to display per page;
• b. check to see which page to display;
• c. process any incoming what and where values;
• d. see if previous search results exits, and use them if so;
• e. parse a search location, and get appropriate latitude and longitude, or the city and state;
• f. process search keywords into a string appropriate for a full text search;
• g. check a default distance to search from a central point represented by the latitude and longitude or city and state and retrieve all zip codes within the default distance;
• h. perform the first search on an information database, limiting the result set to 900, and generating a relevance factor for each resulting record;
• i. perform a second search for paid members in the search region but with records from the additional zip codes table (using the zip codes from the first search), limited to 30, also generating a relevance factor for each resulting record;
• j. verify that all resulting records are current and properly paid or unpaid members;
• k. generate distance values for each record;
• l. remove any duplicate records (by exact match on company name only);
• m. find up to two paid members at random and mark as sponsored listings;
• n. sort members by rank from highest to lowest;
• o. sort members by distance from center;
• p. mark records as chains and sort highest frequency chains lowest;
• q. generate content factor and selected factor;
• r. sort members by content factor and selected factor;
• s. sort lowest rank members to bottom, according to the cutoff rank
• t. set a pages link;
• u. remove member records that are already marked as sponsored listings;
• v. strip off records assigned to previous pages;
• w. get additional data for reach record, process and clean data, get any missing geocodes;
• and
• x. deliver results to user.