slawski - 4:22 am on Oct 9, 2007 (gmt 0)

Hey Tedster,

In that post, I did bring up the earlier patent application, but it was because a newer one does expand the process involved to areas outside localization:

Propagating useful information among related web pages, such as web pages of a website [appft1.uspto.gov]

Here's the abstract:

Web pages of a Website may be processed to improve search results. For example, information likely to pertain to more than just the Web page it is directly associated with may be identified. One or more other, related, Web pages that such information is likely to pertain to is also identified. The identified information is associated with the identified other Web page(s) and this association is saved in a way to affect a search result score of the Web page(s).

The two share an author, Daniel Egnor, who was the technical lead for Google Local Search when the first patent application was written, and moved over to the algorithmic search team. The documents also share some ideas on how a page could possibly be seen as an authority page. The earlier one focused upon which page might be the best one (an authoritative page) for a business determined to be at a specific location.

The second one discusses localization, but it also explores determining whether a specific page might be an authoritative one for a specific query term, or for a category, as well as a business at a specified location.

The kind of boosting that you describe is detailed in the newer patent filing - folding "on-site" factors into their algorithms.