# Geo distance and bounding box
**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/geo-distance-and-bounding-box/10656
**Category:** Elasticsearch
**Created:** [February 7, 2013, 8:36pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/geo-distance-and-bounding-box/10656 "2013-02-07T20:36:46Z")
**Posts on this page:** 6
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@amnesia7](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/amnesia7)
#### Post date: [February 7, 2013, 8:36pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/geo-distance-and-bounding-box/10656/1 "2013-02-07T20:36:46Z")
I am doing a geo\_distance filter in my search (and I also have geo\_distance
as one of my sorting fields).
I'm not sure how ES performs the geo\_distance filtering under the hood but
I was wondering whether I should consider applying a bounding box
(geo\_bbox) filter as well to my search to limit the number of records that
the geo\_distance filter then needs to check individual distances for.
This way ES would be only be checking the distance of records that were
within the bounding box rather than all records that matched the search
term.
How does that sound?
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### Author:  [@Clinton\_Gormley](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Clinton_Gormley)
#### Post date: [February 8, 2013, 10:02am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/geo-distance-and-bounding-box/10656/2 "2013-02-08T10:02:48Z")
> I'm not sure how ES performs the geo\_distance filtering under the hood
> but I was wondering whether I should consider applying a bounding box
> (geo\_bbox) filter as well to my search to limit the number of records
> that the geo\_distance filter then needs to check individual distances
> for.
Have a look at the optimize\_bbox parameter on the geo-distance filter
page:
> **[Elasticsearch Platform — Find real-time answers at scale](https://www.elastic.co)**
>
> Power insights and outcomes with the Elasticsearch Platform and AI. See into your data and find answers that matter with enterprise solutions designed to help you build, observe, and protect. Try Elasticsearch free today.
clint
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### Author:  [@Andrej](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Andrej)
#### Post date: [February 8, 2013, 10:22am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/geo-distance-and-bounding-box/10656/3 "2013-02-08T10:22:35Z")
Hi Clint,
thanks for pointing out to this option, looks like I've overseen it in the
past. I am not sure what the possible values (memory, indexed, ?) mean in
detail, can you share a line on this here? In the meantime I will throw
away my manual bounding box preprocessing ... 😉
Thanks!
Andrej
Am Freitag, 8. Februar 2013 11:02:48 UTC+1 schrieb Clinton Gormley:
> > I'm not sure how ES performs the geo\_distance filtering under the hood
> > but I was wondering whether I should consider applying a bounding box
> > (geo\_bbox) filter as well to my search to limit the number of records
> > that the geo\_distance filter then needs to check individual distances
> > for.
>
> Have a look at the optimize\_bbox parameter on the geo-distance filter
> page:
>
> [Elasticsearch Platform — Find real-time answers at scale | Elastic](http://www.elasticsearch.org/guide/reference/query-dsl/geo-distance-filter.html)
>
> clint
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### Author:  [@Clinton\_Gormley](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Clinton_Gormley)
#### Post date: [February 8, 2013, 10:32am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/geo-distance-and-bounding-box/10656/4 "2013-02-08T10:32:07Z")
On Fri, 2013-02-08 at 02:22 -0800, Andrej Rosenheinrich wrote:
> Hi Clint,
>
> thanks for pointing out to this option, looks like I've overseen it in
> the past. I am not sure what the possible values (memory, indexed, ?)
> mean in detail, can you share a line on this here? In the meantime I
> will throw away my manual bounding box preprocessing ... 😉
'memory' the default, just runs a geo\_bbox check on each geo-point
loaded in memory.
'indexed' can only apply if you also set the lat/lon values to be
indexed separately (set lat\_lon to true in your geo-point mapping)
> **[Elasticsearch Platform — Find real-time answers at scale](https://www.elastic.co)**
>
> Power insights and outcomes with the Elasticsearch Platform and AI. See into your data and find answers that matter with enterprise solutions designed to help you build, observe, and protect. Try Elasticsearch free today.
that way it can use a range filter to do the bbox check, which is
faster. (note that this option will only work for single geopoint values
- it won't work if you have multiple geopoints per field)
clint
> Thanks!
> Andrej
>
> Am Freitag, 8. Februar 2013 11:02:48 UTC+1 schrieb Clinton Gormley:
>
> ```
> > I'm not sure how ES performs the geo_distance filtering
> under the hood
> > but I was wondering whether I should consider applying a
> bounding box
> > (geo_bbox) filter as well to my search to limit the number
> of records
> > that the geo_distance filter then needs to check individual
> distances
> > for.
>
> Have a look at the optimize_bbox parameter on the geo-distance
> filter
> page:
> http://www.elasticsearch.org/guide/reference/query-dsl/geo-distance-filter.html
>
> clint
>
> ```
>
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### Author:  [@amnesia7](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/amnesia7)
#### Post date: [February 9, 2013, 12:06pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/geo-distance-and-bounding-box/10656/5 "2013-02-09T12:06:13Z")
Thanks for pointing that out Clint.
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### Author:  [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [July 6, 2017, 2:52am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/geo-distance-and-bounding-box/10656/6 "2017-07-06T02:52:18Z")