17. A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium carrying one or more sequences of one or more instructions for execution by one or more processors, wherein the executed one or more sequences of one or more instructions cause an apparatus to at least perform the following steps: selecting a toponym-place pair of a target document that includes a plurality of toponyms corresponding to a plurality of toponym-place pairs, wherein the place of each toponym-place pair identifies a geographical location or region designated by the corresponding toponym; and for the selected toponym-place pair the apparatus is caused to further perform: generating a confidence value, wherein the confidence value presents a confidence that the toponym of the selected toponym-place pair refers to the place of the selected toponym-place pair, and wherein the confidence value is pre-computed and derived from a statistical observation about a plurality of documents; determining if another toponym is present within the target document that has an associated place that is geographically related to the place referred to by the selected toponym-place pair; and if the another toponym is present within the target document that has an associated place that is geographically related to the place referred to by the selected toponym-place pair, boosting the generated confidence value for the selected toponym-place pair for the target document; and ranking the target document based on the boosted confidence value.
19. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 17 , wherein determining if the another toponym is present within the target document that has an associated place that is geographically related to the place referred to by the selected toponym-place pair includes identifying the another toponym based, at least in part, on the another toponym having an associated place that is geographically nearby the place referred to by the selected toponym-place pair.