Google Inc.

Lev Ratinov

Baris Yuksel

The present invention relates generally to identifying fraudulent businesses and business listings. More specifically, the invention relates to determining a 'surprisingness' value for a particular combination of words in a business title based on the likelihood that the combination has appeared in legitimate business titles. The value may be used to determine whether the business or business listing is legitimate or fraudulent. For example, third party hijackers may 'keyword-stuff' business titles or attempt to include words associated with prominent businesses in a title of a less prominent business associated with the third party in order to have the less prominent business displayed more often in search results for the prominent business. For example, if a business title has too many surprising word combinations or a particular combination is highly unlikely, the business listing is likely to be fraudulent or &#x201c;keyword-stuffed&#x201d; and may be withheld, excluded, removed from search results.

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New York, NY, United States of America

Lev Ratinov