New Geotargeting Patents from Google

Three recent Google patents have surfaced, and they seem to give insight into some search engine results.  The three patents are titled: “Ordering of search results based on language and/or country of the search results;” “System and method for providing preferred country biasing of search results;” and “System and method of providing preferred language ordering of search results.”

According to HuoMah, the first patent reorders to factor in the the lanuage of the user.  Google accomplishes this task by receiving the search term, identifying languages for the results, then adjusting the order based on determined languages and presenting it to the user.  But it should be noted that regional languages also count as a factor in the search results.  As the application states:

Acceptable languages include languages specified by the user, as well as other acceptable languages. For instance, a French-preferring user might also accept search results in English. Acceptable languages can also include related languages and dialects. For example, Portuguese search results might be acceptable to a user who generally prefers Spanish.

The other patents give weight to a user’s country as well, by performing the same tasks but factoring in one’s country before displaying the results.

It’s interesting to note that the application also made a reference to  classical dead languages, as well as psuedo-languages such as Klingon.  While the amount of people looking to search the web in Klingon is probably small, its nice that the option is still out there.