Abstract: A social networking system allows users of the social networking system to create and join various groups maintained in the social networking system. The social networking system may partition the groups into a geographical grid based on geographic locations associated with the groups, such that each group is associated with a portion of the geographical grid. Each group is associated with one or more topics, which may be inferred by the social networking system based on content posted by members of the group in association with the group and attributes associated with members of the group. Each group is also associated with membership criteria that include attributes for members of the group. Based on the geographical grid, the topics, and/or the membership criteria associated with the groups, the social networking system may select one or more groups to recommend to a user of the social networking system.