Geo-distance query

Geo-distance query #

Matches documents whose geo_point field lies within a great-circle distance of a centre point. Distances are in metres.

This is the “find me things nearby” query: given one centre and one radius, it returns exactly the documents inside that disc on the sphere — the shape behind store locators, delivery zones and proximity alerts.

How it works #

The field is the same two-dimensional (lat, lon) BKD tree the other geo queries use (points indexed in any of the three ingest forms — object, [lon, lat] array, "lat,lon" string). Execution is two-phase: