Yelp / Nearby Places — Simple

Problem statement (interviewer prompt)

Design Yelp / Nearby Places: users search businesses by category + location, view details (hours, photos, reviews, ratings), and write reviews. Geo-sharded indexing must return ranked nearby results in <300ms p99 across 200M+ places globally.

flowchart LR
  U([User])
  SRCH[Search]
  PSVC[Places]
  REV[Reviews]
  GEO[Geo Index]
  IDX[(Search index)]
  U --> SRCH --> IDX
  SRCH --> PSVC
  SRCH --> GEO
  U --> REV

    classDef client fill:#dbeafe,stroke:#1e40af,stroke-width:1px,color:#0f172a;
    classDef edge fill:#cffafe,stroke:#0e7490,stroke-width:1px,color:#0f172a;
    classDef service fill:#fef3c7,stroke:#92400e,stroke-width:1px,color:#0f172a;
    classDef datastore fill:#fee2e2,stroke:#991b1b,stroke-width:1px,color:#0f172a;
    classDef cache fill:#fed7aa,stroke:#9a3412,stroke-width:1px,color:#0f172a;
    classDef queue fill:#ede9fe,stroke:#5b21b6,stroke-width:1px,color:#0f172a;
    classDef compute fill:#d1fae5,stroke:#065f46,stroke-width:1px,color:#0f172a;
    classDef storage fill:#e5e7eb,stroke:#374151,stroke-width:1px,color:#0f172a;
    classDef external fill:#fce7f3,stroke:#9d174d,stroke-width:1px,color:#0f172a;
    classDef obs fill:#f3e8ff,stroke:#6b21a8,stroke-width:1px,color:#0f172a;
    class U client;
    class SRCH,PSVC,REV,GEO service;
    class IDX datastore;