Patent ID: 8584013

Claim:
A method comprising: receiving, at a first time, a search query input specifying a topic; determining, by a data processing apparatus, a time span for the topic and a geographic area for the topic, the time span beginning at a start time that occurs prior to the first time and ending at an end time that occurs prior to the first time; selecting one or more personalization markers from a plurality of personalization markers, each personalization marker corresponding to a respective event having an event time and an event location and including content description data, and wherein at least some of the personalization markers have respective event times not within the time span specified by the input, the selection based on each of the one or more personalization markers corresponding to a respective event and having a respective event time within the time span determined for the input, a respective event location within the geographic area determined for the input, and keywords from the content description data and query terms; generating a temporal layer corresponding to the time span and the geographic area specified by the input, wherein the temporal layer is an overlay for imagery associated with the geographic area and represents an aggregation of the one or more personalization markers; and providing the temporal layer including the one or more personalization markers for display on a device as an overlay for the imagery; further comprising: determining a user profile from the search query input, wherein each user profile is a data structure specifying temporal layers determined to be of interest to the user, each temporal layer specified by a geographic area and a time span; comparing the user profile with other user profiles associated with a plurality of temporal layers to determine, for each other user profile, a similarity measure that is a measure of similarity of the user profile to the other user profile; and identifying a temporal layers of the other user profiles, based on the similarity measure for the other user profile, for recommendation to a user of the user profile.