Method and system for acquiring and distributing location-related information

A system for acquiring and distributing location-related information including one or more processors, memory and a plurality of processing units, the plurality of processing units further comprising:

• a request processing unit, configured to receive a positioning request initiated by a first application running on a client device, wherein the positioning request includes a network address identifying the client device and an identifier of a user account of the first application that has logged into at the server;
• an instruction generation unit, configured to identify a mobile terminal adjacent the client device by looking up the user account identifier of the first application in a database that is communicatively connected to the server, wherein there is a second application currently running on the mobile terminal and the second application has logged into the same user account at the server as the first application running on the client device and there is no direct communication path between the client device and the mobile terminal, and generate a positioning instruction according to the user account identifier;
• a pushing unit, configured to push the positioning instruction to the second application running on the mobile terminal;
• a receiving unit, configured to receive, from the mobile terminal, location information obtained when the second application running on the mobile terminal performs positioning according to the positioning instruction;
• and
• an information sending module, configured to identifying a plurality of search results associated with the location information and send the location information and the plurality of search results associated with the location information to the first application running on the client device using the network address identifying the client device.

A method for providing location-based information, comprising:

• at a server having one or more processors and memory:
• receiving a search request from a first application running on a client device, the search request including one or more search keywords, an identifier of a user account associated with the first application that has logged into at the server, and an IP address of the client device;
• identifying a second application running on a mobile device, wherein the second application has logged into the same user account at the server as the first application running on the client device and there is no direct communication path between the client device and the mobile device;
• determining current location information of the mobile device according to the user account identifier and current location of the client device according to the IP address of the client device, respectively;
• identifying a plurality of search results in accordance with the search keywords and the current location information of the mobile device, when the current location information of the mobile device is within a predefined range of the current location of the client device;
• and
• returning the plurality of search results and the current location information of the mobile device to the client device for display using the IP address identifying the client device.