Patent ID: 8868552

Claim:
A system for searching for businesses at least partially based on social graph information and affinity group information, the system comprising: one or more network interfaces accessible from a network; one or more repositories to retain one or more of: business information; social graph information; user preference information relating to the business information; and/or affinity group information; one or more processors coupled to at least one of the one or more network interfaces and to at least one of the one or more repositories, the one or more processors to execute instructions to: process an input corresponding to a query that is associated with an identified user, the input being received via a network and comprising business selection criteria; search the business information to identify a set of businesses based at least in part on the business selection criteria; process the social graph information relating to a set of users to identify information about one or more networks of social relationships between two or more users of the set of users, the one or more networks of social relationships being associated with one or more social networking websites, wherein the set of users comprises the identified user; process the user preference information relating to the set of businesses, the user preference information indicating that, for one or more businesses of the set of businesses, one or more users of the set of users have indicated one or more preferences for the one or more businesses of the set of businesses; process the affinity group information to identify one or more affinity groups corresponding to the input; rank two or more businesses of the set of businesses based at least in part on: at least some of the social relationship graph information; at least some of the user preference information relating to the plurality of businesses; and at least some of the affinity group information; and generate a search result based at least in part on the ranking of the two or more businesses.