A method for identifying merchant trade areas for search result filtering includes: storing a plurality of merchant profiles, each profile including data related to a merchant including a merchant identifier and merchant geographic location; storing a plurality of transaction data entries, each entry including data related to a payment transaction including a specific merchant identifier and merchant geographic location associated with a merchant involved in the transaction, a consumer primary geographic location associated with a consumer involved in the transaction, and a travel distance based on a distance between the merchant and consumer primary geographic locations; identifying, for each merchant profile, merchant trade area data, the data including trade distances based on the travel distance included in transaction data entries where the included specific merchant identifier corresponds to the merchant identifier included in the respective merchant profile; and updating merchant profiles to include the respective identified merchant trade area data.