Abstract: Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on a computer storage medium, for processing local search results. In one aspect, a method includes accessing data specifying for a first local entity respective sets of second local entities; determining from the respective sets of second local entities a composite set of second local entities ranked according to a composite order of relatedness to the first local entity; determining from the composite set of second local entities, a reference distance for the first local entity; and adjusting the composite order of the composite set of second local entities based on the reference distance for the first local entity and the respective distance of each geographic location of each second local entity from the geographic location of the first local entity.

Abstract: Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on a computer storage medium, for processing local entities. In one aspect a method includes accessing data specifying query terms for each local entity in a set of local entities, and for each query term a term value based on a number of instances of queries that include the query term occurring in a query log, and a selection value based on a number of selections of search results that each reference the local entity in response to a query that includes the query term and attributed to the query term; selecting a first local entity from the set of local entities; selecting a subset of second local entities from the set of local entities; and for each second local entity in the subset, determining a measure of similarity of the second local entity to the first local entity.

Abstract: Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on computer storage media, for classifying a spike in a rate of occurrence of events. One of the methods includes receiving data identifying a spike at a particular time in a rate of occurrence of events relating to a particular search query, where an event relating to the particular search query is a receipt event of the particular search query or an indexing event of a resource that satisfies the particular search query, fitting the occurrences of the events in a time window to a reference distribution of occurrences of events to determine a goodness of fit value, wherein the reference distribution models a random occurrence of events relating to search queries, comparing the goodness of fit value to a primary threshold, and classifying the spike as a spurious spike if the goodness of fit value satisfies the predetermined threshold.