Search engine and indexing techniques

• US 8,176,082 B2
• Filed: 09/22/2010
• Issued: 05/08/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 05/08/2004
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Local.com
• Original Assignee: Local.com Corporation (Local.com)
• Inventors: Xia, Xiongwu
• Primary Examiner(s): Woo, Isaac M
• Application Number:
  US12/888,149
• Publication Number:
  US 20110016106A1
• Time in Patent Office: 594 Days
• Field of Search: 707600-831
• US Class Current: 707/791
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/22 Indexing; Data structures therefor; Storage structures
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/29 Geographical information databases
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9537 Spatial or temporal dependent retrieval, e.g. spatiotemporal queries
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99933 Query processing, i.e. searching
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99937 Sorting
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99945 Object-oriented database structure processing
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99948 Application of database or data structure, e.g. distributed, multimedia, or image

Abstract

A local search engine geographically indexes information for searching by identifying a geocoded web page of a web site and identifying at least one geocodable web page of the web site. The system identifies a geocode contained within content of the geocoded web page of the web site. The geocode indicates a physical location of an entity associated with the web site. The system indexes content of the geocoded web page and content of the geocodable web page. The indexing including associating the geocode contained within content of the geocoded web page to the indexed content of the geocoded web page and the geocodable web page to allow geographical searching of the content of the web pages.

Claims

1. A system comprising:

a network interface to receive a domain name associated with a domain on the Internet;

a web crawler retrieving a first page based on a first address, the first address at least in part specifying the domain on the Internet from which to retrieve the first page;

wherein retrieving the first page includes;

retrieving, based on the first address, the first page from the Internet;

detecting that the first page includes a link to a second page;

retrieving the second page based on a second address, the second address at least in part specifying the domain on the Internet;

wherein retrieving the second page includes utilizing the link to retrieve the second page from a server over a network and detecting geographical information associated with the second page;

wherein detecting the geographical information includes detecting presence of the geographical information in the second page based on analyzing contents of the second page retrieved from the server; and

a processor to associate the geographical information in the second page to the first page to create an index.

2. The system in claim 1, further comprising a search interface receiving a search request from a requestor, the search request including a request for web page addresses of entities located in a particular physical geographical location as specified by the search request;

identifying that the particular physical geographical location in the search request and the geographical information associated with the second page specify a same geographical location;

utilizing the index to generate search results that satisfy the search request; and

generating the search results to include the first address for retrieval of the first page.

3. The system of claim 2, wherein the search interface allows geographical searching of the content of the web pages by processing a user query that includes a location against the indexed content of the web pages to identify web pages within a predetermined proximity to the location specified in the user query that contain content matching the user query.

4. The system of claim 3, wherein the user query includes at least one keyword and the search interface identifies matching web pages in that folder that contain content matching the at least one keyword of the user query;

uses the location to identify a set of nearby specific geographic references indexed within the folder that are within a proximity to the location; and

provides an indication of the identified web pages to a computer system from which the user query was received.

5. The system of claim 2, wherein the search interface includes a main dispatcher computer in a cluster of computers, the other computers in the cluster each being assigned a portion of folders containing geographically indexed content of web pages and a portion of the index associated with those folders containing the geographically indexed content;

the main dispatcher computer forwarding the user query to a computer in the cluster that is responsible for searching the geographic region associated with the location specified in the user query.

6. The system in claim 1, wherein the first address and second address are uniform resource locators, and wherein each of the first address and second address include a common domain name specifying the domain name.

7. The system in claim 1, wherein the web crawler detects the geographical information by analyzing contents of the second page to identify the geographical information;

and in response to identifying that the geographical information includes a street address, considers the geographical information to be a valid physical address location of an entity associated with the second page.

8. The system in claim 1, wherein the web crawler further detects geographical information associated with the first page, utilizes the geographical information associated with the second page as a location index for both the first page and the second page, and utilizes the geographical information associated with the first page as a location index for only the first page.

9. The system in claim 8, wherein the processor creates a set of folders;

designates a first folder in the set to track web pages associated with entities physically located in a first geographical region;

designates a second folder in the set to track web pages associated with entities physically located in a second geographical region, the first geographical region at least partially overlapping with the second geographical region; and

in response to detecting that a given page is associated with a particular entity physically located within both the first geographical region and the second geographical region;

initiating storage of reference information in the first folder, the reference information in the first folder specifying the given page, inclusion of the reference information in the first folder indicating that an entity associated with the given page resides within the first geographical region; and

initiates storage of reference information in the second folder, the reference information in the second folder specifying the given page, inclusion of the reference information in the second folder indicating that the entity associated with the given page resides within the second geographical region.

10. The system in claim 1, wherein the processor designates a first repository to track web pages associated with entities physically located in a first geographical region, the first repository including references to page A and page B;

designates a second repository to track web pages associated with entities physically located in a second geographical region, the second repository including a reference to page C;

in response to detecting that page A includes a link to page B, performs a link analysis to rank page A and page B in the first repository; and

in response to detecting that page C includes a link to page B, prevents a link analysis because page C and page B do not represent entities residing in a same geographical region.

11. The system in claim 1, wherein the processor derives a rank for the first page depending on a number of other pages including a link to the first page;

and utilizes the rank for the first page and rankings of other pages associated with the physical location to identify a position to display a reference to the first page in corresponding search results.

12. The system in claim 1 wherein the web crawler traverses links originating from a seed web page to identify new web pages of a web site, the web pages of the web site including a geocoded web page and the at least one geocodable web page;

and strips the content of web pages of the web site to a format containing only text content.

13. The system of claim 12 wherein the web crawler, for at least one web page within the web site, identifies that at least one web page as the geocoded web page if the text content of that web page contains at least one of:

i) a geocode in a complete form within the text content of the web page; and

ii) at least a portion of the geocode within the text content of the identified web page, and if at least a portion of the geocode within the text content of the identified web page is present, performing a secondary lookup operation to identify remaining content of the geocode; and

associating the geocode of the geocoded web page to the content of the geocoded web page.

14. The system of claim 12 wherein the geocode of the geocoded web page is a major geocode and wherein the web crawler further identifies a web page of the web site containing addressing information indicating a minor geocode, wherein the minor geocode is a geocode other than the major geocode;

the web crawler further associates the major geocode to the web page of the web site containing a minor geocode; and

associates the minor geocode only to the web page of the web site containing addressing information indicating a minor geocode allowing the search of the web page via major and minor geocodes.

15. The system of claim 12 wherein:

the geocoded web page is at least one of;

i) a home page of the web site;

ii) a contact page of the web site;

iii) a direction page of the web site;

iv) an about page of the web site;

v) a help page of the web site; and

vi) a page of the web site that is no deeper than a predetermined number of links below the home page of the web site; and

wherein the geocode contains a complete physical address of the entity associated with the web site.