GEOTILES FOR FINDING RELEVANT RESULTS FROM A GEOGRAPHICALLY DISTRIBUTED SET

• US 20140214791A1
• Filed: 01/31/2013
• Published: 07/31/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 01/31/2013
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Wong, Gilbert, Singh, Tejeshwar, Shah, Hiren, Lu, Haibo
• Granted Patent: US 9,449,110 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/710
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9537 Spatial or temporal dependent retrieval, e.g. spatiotemporal queries
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0261 based on user location

Abstract

Architecture that utilizes geotiles to return locally relevant results across a geographically distributed set of locations. As applied to retail operations the business entity may have a retail presence in many different geographical areas (e.g., regions) of a country. Each retail presence is processed to obtain the associated geographical coordinates, which are then utilized to select one or more geotiles of a mapping system. The geotile(s) for those geographical coordinates are than identified and related to the location. The business entity may be associated with a deal (offer) that is queried using a search engine. The relationships of the deal, retail stores, geographical coordinates of the retail stores, and related geotiles are memorialized in a feed document. Thus, when a query is made for the deal, the search engine accesses the feed document and returns the geotiles for visual presentation of the associated retailer as part of the search result.

Claims

1. A system, comprising:

a search component that returns results of relevant retail stores of a business entity for a retail offering, the retail stores relevant to a geographical location of a user making a query for the retail offering, the relevant retail stores obtained based on comparison of the geographical location of the user to geotile information of the retail stores of the business entity; and

a microprocessor that executes computer-executable instructions associated with the search component.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the results include the relevant stores within multiple different radii from the geographic location of the user.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the search component computes a distance between a centroid of a geotile associated with the query and returns a list of retail stores that match the query, using a query radius, and filters out retail stores outside the query radius.

4. The system of claim 1, further comprising a geocoding component that geocodes physical locations of a geographically distributed set of physical locations related to the business entity to define geographical coordinates for the physical locations, and a mapping component that identifies geotiles associated with each of the geocoded physical locations based on associated geotile information.

5. The system of claim 1, further comprising a document component that generates a document that represents the retail offering and a document index of physical location geotiles of the retail stores providing the retail offering.

6. The system of claim 5, wherein the document index of physical location geotiles enumerates all relevant physical locations of the retail stores providing the retail offering deal.

7. The system of claim 6, wherein the search component includes a search engine that queries the geotile information of the document index to find only locally relevant retail stores for the retail offering.

8. The system of claim 5, wherein the document component creates one document per the retail offering.

9. A method performed by a computer system executing machine-readable instructions, the method comprising acts of:

receiving a query for a geographical location that provides an item of interest;

computing a geographic location of the source of the query;

matching the geographic location of the source to geotile information of a geotile that corresponds to the geographical location that provides the item of interest;

returning the geographical location that provides the item of interest in a search result based on the matched geotile information; and

configuring a microprocessor to execute instructions associated with at least one of the acts of receiving, computing, matching, or returning.

10. The method of claim 9, further comprising generating a feed document that represents the item of interest and a list of corresponding geotile information of all geographic locations that can provide the item of interest.

11. The method of claim 9, further comprising geocoding geographic information of the geographic location that provides the item of interest and obtaining the geotile information of the geotile that corresponds to geocoded geographic information.

12. The method of claim 9, further comprising enabling a radius search as part of the query to return all geographical locations that provide the item of interest based on associated geotile information of a feed document.

13. The method of claim 9, further comprising identifying a base geotile and encompassing geotiles of the geographic location that provides the item of interest.

14. The method of claim 9, further comprising creating a single feed document for a single item of interest and indexing all geographic locations and associated geotile information of the geographic locations that can provide the item of interest.

15. The method of claim 9, further comprising processing a centroid related to the geographic location of the source of the query and processing a radius associated with the centroid to identify a geotile associated with a geographical location that provides the item of interest.

16. The method of claim 15, further comprising computing a distance between the centroid and returned list of geographical location that can provide the item of interest, and removing from the list geographical locations that exceed the radius.

17. A method performed by a computer system executing machine-readable instructions, the method comprising acts of:

receiving a query from a user for a retail store that provides a retail offer;

computing a geographic location of the user;

matching the geographic location of the user to geotile information of a geotile that corresponds to geographical location of the retail store that provides the offer;

returning the retail store in a search result based on the matched geotile information; and

configuring a microprocessor to execute instructions associated with at least one of the acts of receiving, computing, matching, or returning.

18. The method of claim 17, further comprising creating a single feed document for the retail offer and indexing all retail stores and associated geotile information.

19. The method of claim 17, further comprising processing a centroid related to the geographic location of the user and processing a radius associated with the centroid to identify a geotile associated with the retail store.

20. The method of claim 17, further comprising computing the geotile as a base geotile and finding encompassing geotiles of the base geotile for indexing in a feed document.