Identifying locations

• US 20070015119A1
• Filed: 07/13/2006
• Published: 01/18/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 07/13/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Google LLC (Alphabet Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Google Inc. (Alphabet Inc.)
• Inventors: Atenasio, Christopher
• Granted Patent: US 8,959,084 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 434/130
• CPC Class Codes: G01C 21/20 Instruments for performing navigational calculations G01C21/24, G01C21/26 take precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/24 Querying
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/29 Geographical information databases
• CPC Class Codes: G09B 25/06 for surveying; for geography, e.g. relief models globes G09B27/00; maps G09B29/00
• CPC Class Codes: G09B 29/106 using electronic means

Abstract

A computer-implemented method includes receiving in a query a location identifier from a user of a remote device, parsing the input location identifier to generate one or more location-related tokens, querying a repository of location information with the one or more location-related tokens to identify locations for one or more documents having a substantial match to the tokens, scoring the one or more documents using a mass of location for each document that represents the geographical size of a location associated with the document, and presenting information relating to the one or more documents for display using the mass of location.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method, comprising:

receiving in a query a location identifier from a user of a remote device;

parsing the input location identifier to generate one or more location-related tokens;

querying a repository of location information with the one or more location-related tokens to identify locations for one or more documents having a substantial match to the tokens;

scoring the one or more documents using a mass of location for each document that represents the geographical size of a location associated with the document; and

presenting information relating to the one or more documents for display using the mass of location.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising receiving a query-independent geographical indication from the remote device and using the query-independent geographical indication to score the one or more documents.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the query independent geographical indication is selecting from the group consisting of a location where the remote device is located, a bounding box of a map displayed on the device, and a region corresponding to the Internet domain the user is on.

4. The method of claim 2, wherein the score for a document comprises a ratio of the mass of the document to a distance between the query-independent geographic indication and a result.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the step of querying a repository of location information comprises recursively querying the repository using less specific information until a sufficient number of matches are found.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the step of querying a repository of location information comprises querying for each permutation of tokens with a token eliminated.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein the step of querying a repository of location information comprises querying for each permutation of tokens with two tokens eliminated, if a match is not made with one token eliminated.

8. The method of claim 6, further comprising weighting each permutation of tokens and using the weights to score results from querying each permutation.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein the weighting comprises assigning a weight to each token based on its content and adjusting the weight according to the location of the token in the query.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein the query comprises a search request.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein presenting information relating to the one or more documents for display comprises presenting a ranked list of search results.

12. A location-based data collection and distribution system, comprising a request processor to receive data requests from one or more remote clients;

a location-based tokenizer that identifies location-related tokens in the data. queries; and

a result scorer to query a repository of location information with the one or more location-related tokens to identify locations for one or more documents having a substantial match to the tokens and score the one or more documents using a mass of location for each document.

13. A location-based data collection and distribution system, comprising a request processor to receive data requests from one or more remote clients;

a location-based tokenizer that identifies location-related tokens in the data queries; and

a means for scoring items responsive to the data request.

14. A method of identifying location-based information in a corpus of documents, comprising:

parsing a document in the corpus of documents to generate one or more tokens;

comparing combinations of adjacent generated tokens with combinations of tokens in a location-based repository;

querying a general database using a combination of adjacent tokens that have a match in the location-based repository; and

assigning the adjacent generated tokens as a location for the document if there the query generates a sufficient number of matches.

15. The method of claim 14, wherein the location-based repository comprises token bigrams from a larger repository.

16. The method of claim 15, wherein the comparison of adjacent generated tokens with combinations of tokens in the location-based repository comprises comparing overlapping bigrams from a set of three consecutive tokens.

17. The method of claim 14, further comprising adding tokens to the adjacent generated tokens to make an enlarged token set, and comparing the enlarged token set to the location-based repository.

18. The method of claim 17, further comprising repeatedly adding adjacent tokens to make enlarged token sets and comparing the enlarged token set to the location-based repository until no match results, and querying the general database with the largest enlarged token set.

19. The method of claim 18, further comprising reducing the largest enlarged token set to generate a reduced token set if there is no match for the query, and re-querying the general database with the reduced token set.

20. The method of claim 14, wherein the general database comprises information extracted from documents on the Internet.