Community Endorsements for Local Searches

Community Endorsements for Local Search Results as a Ranking Signal?

Imagine joining a social network like Orkut or Friendster and having the chance to leave comments on local businesses, restaurants, and more, and endorsing show up in Google local results.

The folks at Google have imagined something like that and have published a community endorsement patent application that describes how it might be done.

Methods and systems for endorsing local search results Inventors: Thomas Christopher Korte, Sumit Agarwal, and Celia Saino US Patent Application 20060004713 Filed: June 30, 2004 Published January 5, 2006

Abstract:

Methods and systems for improving user search experience with a search engine by providing a way for associated users to create and share personalized lists of local search results and/or advertisements through endorsements of such local search results and/or ads.

Local search endorsements can be used to personalize the search engine’s ranking of local search results by offering a way for users to re-rank the results for themselves and those who trust them.

How community endorsements might work in a nutshell

Someone signs up to become a member of a social network.

As a member, that person can endorse local search results.

Some icon or indicator would then appear in the local search results in response to a query and have community endorsements associated with it.

In addition, members of those groups could see community endorsements from other members of the social network.

They would have the ability to re-rank those endorsements in that list. Their actions could influence the rankings of sites that appear in local results for other network members and possibly for people who trust that network.

There’s also a mention in this Community Endorsements patent application of an unpublished U.S. patent application that is also pending titled “Methods and Systems Endorsing Search Results.” By omitting the word “local” from that one, it sounds like a way to make these community endorsements work with the main search results.