GeoNames Forum

When using the /search webservice to retrieve entries for a given place name typically several results are returned. I would like to know how this ranking is produced. Especially when querying ambiguous place names like "Santiago" it appears that results are ranked first by matching the query and then by population. Is this the case or are their any other ranking rules applied?

The background of my question is that I want to use the API in a geographic search application and I want to make transparent why certain locations are displayed first.