Patent Document ID: 20150112978
Application ID: 14057692
Patent Status: 0

Claim One:
1. A method performed by data processing apparatus, the method comprising: receiving data specifying a search query, and a location of a user device from which the search query was received; receiving data specifying a set of documents determined to be relevant to the search query, the data specifying, for each of the documents, a respective search score indicative of the relevance of the document to the query and a ranking of the documents according to a first order based on the search scores, and wherein a proper subset of the documents are local documents, wherein each of the local documents is a document that is specified as having local significance to a geographic location of a user device; determining that a first local document in the proper subset of the local documents is eligible for a demotion operation that adjusts its respective search score to demote the rank of the first local document in the first order, the determination based at least in part on a proximity measure based on the geographic location of the user device and a geographic location specified for the first local document, and in response to the determination: for each second local document in the proper subset of local documents, determining a proximity measure that is based on the geographic location of the user device and the geographic location specified for the second local document; and adjusting the search score of the first local document to demote its ranking the first order when at least one of the proximity measures indicates a respective second local document has a specified geographic location that is within a threshold distance of the geographic location of the user device.