Patent attributes
A method and apparatus for providing geographically authenticated electronic documents is disclosed. Authentication for attributes for an electronic document stored on a computer network are defined, the attributes comprise at least one attribute describing a geographic location associated with the electronic document. Authenticated attributes (e.g., geographic location) of electronic documents (e.g., Web pages) allow for more accurate geographic searching and filtering. An authenticated digital certificate is created and associated with an electronic document. The authenticated digital certificate can be stored within the electronic document, such as can be done with HTML tags on a Web page. The digital certificate can also be stored as a separate file associated with the electronic document, as a separate signed digital certificate and as a database record.