Patent ID: 11960558
Assignee: MICROSOFT TECHNOLOGY LICENSING, LLC
Field: Computer technology (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC G | IPC G

Claim 0:
1. A server device for storing entities for retrieval, the server device comprising:
one or more processors that receive a prefix and a location and, based at least in part on the prefix and location, determine a tile in one or more levels of a database structure that represents a geographic area at a plurality of levels, each level divided into a plurality of tiles each having a geographic scope, and for successive levels, the tiles in each successive level have a progressively reduced geographic scope, wherein to determine the tile comprises:
selecting between a first level and a second level from the successive levels for returning matching entities based at least in part on a first count of the matching entities in a first tile at the first level being below a threshold and a second count of the matching entities in a second tile at the second level being above the threshold; and

one or more storage locations that store the entities in multiple levels based on locations associated with the entities, wherein the entities are stored in tries including a level identifier, a tile identifier, and an entity name, wherein the tries include data structures that, in response to a query including the prefix, return the matching entities that include the prefix within a corresponding level and a corresponding tile to the one or more processors for ranking based on popularity and distance from a user that provides the prefix and the location.