Document relevance is determined with respect to a region of interest (ROI). A set of location references may be associated with a set of documents. The system selects location references associated with an ROI and then selects documents corresponding to the selected location references. The selected documents can be reported or processed further. A document-location reference index can be accessed when the present system is ‘online’ and processing a request for documents relevant to an ROI. The document-location reference index may be generated and updated while the present system is ‘offline’ and not processing a request for documents. The resulting relevant documents may be provided to a user in response to a document search associated with the ROI or along with an advertisement associated with the ROI.