Patent ID: 8700610

Claim:
A method, performed by one or more server devices, the method comprising: receiving, at one or more processors of the one or more server devices and from a user, information for generating a news alert, the information for generating the news alert including: information that identifies search terms relating to a topic of interest to the user, an indication of a location at which the search terms are to be located within news articles, information identifying one or more sources from which the news articles are to originate, and information identifying one or more geographical locations from which the news articles are to originate; generating, by the one or more processors of the one or more server devices, a search string based on the information for generating the news alert; periodically searching, by one or more processors of the one or more server devices, news articles from a plurality of sources of news articles without user intervention and based on the search string; identifying, by one or more processors of the one or more server devices and based on the searching, news articles relating to the topic of interest to the user, identifying the news articles including: determining a plurality of news articles related to the topic of interest, ranking the plurality of news articles, and removing one or more news articles, from the ranked plurality of news articles, that do not include the search terms at the location, to identify the news articles related to the topic of interest that include the search terms at the indicated location, that originate from the one or more sources and the one or more geographic locations; generating, by one or more processors of the one or more server devices, the news alert that includes information associated with one or more of the identified news articles; and providing, by one or more processors of the one or more server devices, the news alert to a device associated with the user.