Presentation of Local Results

• US 20080172374A1
• Filed: 01/17/2007
• Published: 07/17/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 01/17/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Google LLC (Alphabet Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Google Inc. (Alphabet Inc.)
• Inventors: Lu, Charity Yueh-Chwen, Wolosin, Gabriel
• Granted Patent: US 7,966,321 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/5
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9537 Spatial or temporal dependent retrieval, e.g. spatiotemporal queries

Abstract

A computer-implemented method is disclosed. The method includes receiving from a remote device a search query, generating a local result set and one or more non-local result sets for the search query, determining a display location for the local result set relative to the non-local result set based on a position of the search query in a local relevance indicium.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method, comprising:

receiving from a remote device a search query;

generating a local result set and one or more non-local result sets for the search query; and

determining a display location for the local result set relative to the non-local result set based on a position of the search query in a local relevance indicium.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the display location for the local result is based on local relevance indicium only if the search query does not contain an explicit location identifier, and the display location for the local result depends on the explicit location identifier if the search query does contain an explicit location identifier.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the non-local result set comprises a web search result set.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising transmitting the local result set and the one or more non-local result sets to the remote device, formatted for display on the remote device in the determined display location.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the display location for the local result set is in front of the display location for the one or more non-local result sets if the search query has a high local relevance indicium.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein, if the search query has a high local relevance indicium, the local result set is displayed in response to the search query and the one or more non-local result sets are not displayed but are made available for display.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the local relevance indicium is generated from a list of search queries predetermined to be particularly relevant to local results or particularly non-relevant to local results.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the local relevance indicium is generated by a machine learning system trained on prior search queries.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein the local relevance indicium comprises a set of rules that are applied to the search query.

10. The method of claim 9, wherein the set of rules is generated by analyzing two or more factors selected from the group consisting of query language, query domain location, or quality of search results for query.

11. The method of claim 1, further comprising determining whether a location has been associated with the remote device, and affecting the level of indicium needed to change the display location for the local result set relative to the non-local result set.

12. The method of claim 1, further comprising formatting the local result set and the one or more non-local result sets to be displayed in a tabbed array in order of decreasing correlation between each category-directed result set and the search query.

13. The method of claim 1, wherein the search query is received from a mobile device.

14. An apparatus for generating ordered search results, comprising:

a search query processor configured to receive and process a search request from a remote device;

a search engine that receives the processed search request and generates a plurality of category-related search result groups that include a local results group; and

a local results ranker that determines a position of the local results group for presentation to a user by determining an indicium of locality for the search request.

15. The apparatus of claim 14, further comprising a results formatter that formats the plurality of category-related search result groups in a web document to be displayed in a graphical user interface on the remote device with an array of selectable tabs, wherein each of the selectable tabs corresponds to a different category of information.

16. The apparatus of claim 14, wherein the local results ranker generates the local relevance indicium using a list of search queries predetermined to be particularly relevant to local results or particularly non-relevant to local results.

17. The apparatus of claim 14, wherein the local results ranker uses a machine learning system trained on prior search queries to generate the local relevance indicium.

18. The apparatus of claim 17, wherein the relevance indicium comprises a set of rules that are applied to the search query.

19. The apparatus of claim 18, wherein the set of rules is generated by analyzing two or more factors selected from the group consisting of query language, query domain location, or quality of search results for query.

20. The apparatus of claim 14, wherein the local results ranker determines whether a location has been associated with the remote device, and affects the level of indicium needed to change the display location for the local result set relative to the non-local result set based on the determination.

21. An apparatus for generating ordered search results, comprising:

a search query processor configured to receive and process a search request from a remote device;

a search engine that receives the processed search request and generates a plurality of category-related search result groups that include a local results group; and

means for determining a position of the local results group for presentation to a user by determining an indicium of locality for the search request.