Google Inc.

Andy Carlson

Robert Hall

Liangying Wu

Timothy Stevenson

A product catalog system includes a product catalog having information regarding products for sale online by various merchants. The product catalog system transmits information regarding products in response to queries for a target product and also transmits information regarding products that serve as alternatives to the target product. The product catalog system includes a product alternatives module that identifies product alternatives based on information regarding a multitude of received queries and information regarding products that were selected from other products presented in response to the queries. The alternatives module computes an association weight for pairs of products that indicates the likelihood that the two products are alternatives. This association weight is based on the query and product information and further based on the number of times that the two products were the subject of a comparison query.

Identifying alternative products

A product catalog system includes a product catalog having product offers received from various merchants. The product catalog system includes an analysis module that determines, for each merchant that provides product offers, which product offers are for products that are likely to be variants of one another based in part on titles of the products and assigns sets of product offers that are likely to be variants a merchant cluster identifier. The analysis module groups the product offers into product catalog entries based on the particular product that the offers are for. The analysis module determines which products are variants based on associations between the product catalog entries and the merchant cluster identifiers of the product offers included in the product catalog entries.

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Pittsburgh, PA, United States of America

Andy Carlson