Analysis of geographic queries in a search engine log
Qingqing Gan, Josh Attenberg, Alexander Markowetz, Torsten Suel · 2008
Geography is becoming increasingly important in web search. Search engines can often return better results to users by analyzing features such as user location or geographic terms in web pages and user queries. This is also of great commercial value as it enables location specific advertising and improved search for local businesses. As a result, major search companies have invested significant resources into geographic search technologies, also often called local search.