Patent ID: 8200694

Claim:
A method comprising: receiving a query having one or more terms, the query associated with a user locale, the user locale indicating a locale associated with a user that submitted the query; determining, using one or more processors, a degree of implicit local relevance for the query with respect to each of one or more locales, where the degree of implicit local relevance is determined using one or more terms of the query that do not explicitly identify a locale and where the degree of implicit local relevance for the query identifies a combined degree to which each of the one or more terms of the query is relevant to the one or more respective locales; receiving one or more search results for the query, each search result having a respective score and a respective result locale; and modifying the score of a respective search result using the degree of implicit local relevance for the query, the user locale, and the respective result locale of the respective search result.