System design interview questionMediumProximity / Location
Design a Proximity Service like Yelp or Nearby Places
Design a proximity/nearby service (Yelp-style): given a location, return nearby places fast.
Interview scope
Client → LB/Gateway → App → Cache (hot geo results) + DB (places). No Client → DB/Cache.
Functional requirements
- Query places near lat/long (radius / top-k).
- Support filters (category, rating) at a high level.
- Ingest/update place listings.
Scale and quality goals
- Read-heavy: map moves create many nearby queries.
- Hot geo queries should hit cache / indexed data, not full scans.
- Place metadata needs durable storage.
Capacity assumption
Design for this scale
Assume ~20M nearby searches/day (~230 RPS average); peaks higher in dense cities at dinner time.
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