Google Inc.

Gregory John Donaker

James Christopher Norris

Nina Kang

David L Blackman

Jason Lee

Tamara I Stern

Sasha Blair-Goldensohn

Bernhard A M Seefeld

Methods, system, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on computer storage media, for selecting between location-specific and global search results. One method includes receiving a query and a location identifier identifying a geographic location, obtaining a location-specific set of search results responsive to the query and a global set of search results responsive to the query, and determining a cluster score for the global set of search results. The method further includes selecting either the global set of search results or the location-specific set of search results as a primary set of search results according to one or more scores for the location-specific and global sets of search results, wherein the one or more scores include the cluster score, and identifying one or more identified search results in the primary set of search results for presentation in response to the query.

Selecting between global and location-specific search results

Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on a computer storage medium, for generating descriptions of relationships between entities. In one aspect, a method includes identifying one or more related entities for a particular entity based at least in part on commonalities between the particular entity and the one or more related entities, sorting the commonalities according to a measure of uniqueness of each of the commonalities, and identifying a subset of the commonalities having a measure of uniqueness above a lower measure of uniqueness threshold. The identified subset of commonalities can include one or more commonalities. One or more commonalities can be selected from the subset of commonalities as indicative of a relationship to the particular entity, and a description of the relationship can be identified based on the selected one or more commonalities.

Identifying interesting commonalities between entities

The subject matter of this specification can be embodied in, among other things, a method that includes identifying resources relating to an entity, where each resource includes multiple terms and is included in a corpus of resources relating to multiple entities. Candidate terms from the resources for potentially associating with the entity and a category associated with the entity are identified. A relative frequency of the candidate terms in the identified resources is compared to a frequency of the candidate terms associated with other entities. Each of the candidate terms are weighted, for example, based on a source of the candidate term and the relative frequency of the candidate term. A weighted frequency of each candidate term is calculated based on the weights, and candidate terms are selected as representative terms for the entity based on the weighted frequency.

Assigning terms of interest to an entity

A search query may be interpreted as a number of possible interpretations, and each interpretation may be explored before the results of the search are sent to a user. In one embodiment, a device may split the search query into partitions. Each of the partitions may be submitted, as a search query, to search repositories. Confidence scores based on the results returned from the repositories may be used to determine a measure of confidence of the repository in the search query interpretation.

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Brooklyn, NY, United States of America

Gregory John Donaker