Patent Document ID: 9384289
Application ID: 12977851

Base Claim:
1. A method for determining a geographic location of a user, the method comprising: receiving a query at a search engine from the user searching an inverted index to identify one or more geographical locations associated with one or more terms of the received query, wherein the inverted index comprises plurality of listed query terms, each of which is associated with at least one geographic location and respective relevance score associated therewith, wherein each respective relevance score indicates a level of relevancy of a respective geographical location with the listed query term and is computed based on previously submitted search query terms by at least one user and whether the previously submitted search query terms corresponds to a location specific search query selecting one of the identified one or more geographic locations as the geographic location of the user based on relevance scores associated with the search query and whether the search query is a location specific search query.

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Claim 4:
4. The method of claim 1 , wherein the received query includes a plurality of terms, wherein said searching comprises: identifying in the inverted index a plurality of geographical locations associated with the received query; and identifying in the inverted index the relevance score for each of the plurality of geographical locations; wherein said selecting comprises: selecting a geographical location from the plurality of geographical locations having the highest relevance score to be the determined location for the user that submitted the received query.