An approach is provided for cleaning data sets for a search process. The cleanup platform determines one or more reference documents associated with at least one region. Next, the cleanup platform processes and/or facilitates a processing of the one or more reference documents to determine a frequency distribution of one or more candidate stop words with respect to the at least one region. Then, the cleanup platform causes, at least in part, selection of one or more stop words applicable to the at least one region from the one or more candidate stop words based, at least in part, on one or more frequency distribution criteria. Additionally, the cleanup platform processes and/or facilitates a processing of at least one data set associated with a search process to generate at least one enhanced data set by filtering the one or more stop words from the at least one data set.