Google Inc.

James Robert Muller

Ramesh Balakrishnan

James Christopher Norris

Keith Ito

Lalitesh Kumar Katragadda

Lars Eilstrup Rasmussen

Thai Tran

Florian Michel Buron

Amit Singhal

Jack Wright Menzel

Florian Buron

Qingzhao Tan

Rasika S Kumar

Jacqueline Frances Bavaro

Eugene Nudelman

James S Norris

Ranking of geographic information includes receiving information about geographic features, identifying documents based on the information, each document being associated with one of the geographic features, and generating a rank score for each document based on one or more properties of the geographic feature associated with the document.

Ranking of geographic information

Providing information includes identifying documents that are responsive to a query, some of the documents each being associated with a geographic feature, and providing a list of the documents in a sequence that is determined based on rank scores derived from one or more properties of the geographic features associated with the documents.

Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on computer storage media, for providing local data with search results. One of the methods includes obtaining a plurality of documents responsive to a query; determining that a first document of the plurality of documents is associated with at least one business; determining that the first document is a candidate local document in response to the determining; in response to determining that the first document is a candidate local document, verifying that the first document is a local document, the verifying based on one or more second documents of the plurality of documents; and in response to verifying that the first document is a local document, providing local data associated with the first document.

Providing local data with search results

Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on a computer storage medium, for merging search results. In one aspect, a method combines search results responsive to a query that are obtained from a local search engine and a universal search engine such that the combined search results are ordered and presented in a way that emphasizes certain business entities in the results.

Merging search results

A method for performing a location search includes receiving a location search query, determining key words corresponding to the location search query, identifying one or more documents that correspond to the key words in the location search query, and providing to a client system information identifying at least one location corresponding to the one or more documents.

Geographic coding for location search queries

A method for performing a location search includes receiving a location search query, identifying one or more geographical features that satisfy the location search query, ranking the identified geographical features in accordance with a score that is based, at least in part, on proximity of the geographical features to a geographical viewport region of a client system, to produce a set of ranked geographical features, and providing results, in accordance with the ranked documents, that identify at least one geographic feature corresponding to the at least one of the ranked geographical features.

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James Robert Muller