INDEXING DOCUMENTS ACCORDING TO GEOGRAPHICAL RELEVANCE

摘要

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a local search engine which efficiently locates relevant results in a desired geographic region defined by a zip code or street address and returns such information to index documents.SOLUTION: A local search engine efficiently indexes documents relevant to a geographical region 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 regions surrounding a geographical region relevant to a document and associate references to the set of geographical regions with the document index.