Detecting new businesses with unrecognized query terms

• US 9,218,420 B1
• Filed: 02/26/2013
• Issued: 12/22/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 02/26/2013
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Google LLC (Alphabet Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Google Inc. (Alphabet Inc.)
• Inventors: Murphy, Bruce Winston
• Primary Examiner(s): Mofiz, Apu
• Assistant Examiner(s): BIBBEE, JARED M
• Application Number:
  US13/777,476
• Time in Patent Office: 1,029 Days
• Field of Search: 707/706
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques

Abstract

Provided is a process for identifying a new business listing, the process including: identifying, from a log of local search queries, a term that does not correspond to a name of a business listing; determining a number of recent search queries containing the term and a number of historical search queries containing the term; determining that a rate based on the number of recent search queries exceeds a threshold rate based on the number of historical search queries; and identifying the term as a name of a new business listing.

Claims

1. A method for identifying a new business listing, comprising:

acquiring a log of local search queries submitted by users;

identifying, from the log of local search queries, a term that does not correspond to a name of a business listing;

determining a number of recent search queries containing the term and a number of historical search queries containing the term;

determining a threshold rate based on the number of historical search queries;

determining that a rate based on the number of recent search queries exceeds the threshold rate based on the number of historical search queries; and

identifying the term as a name of a new business listing; and

searching reviews of new businesses for the term in response to identifying the term as a name of a new business;

determining that the name appears in the reviews; and

identifying the term as being confirmed as a new business.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the term is identified from a log of local search queries in a particular geographic area, and the number of recent search queries and the number of historical search queries are obtained from the particular geographic area.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein identifying, from the log of local search queries, a term that does not correspond to a name of a business listing comprises:

filtering from a larger set of search queries those search queries for which a user selected a proposed spelling corrected query.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein identifying, from the log of local search queries, a term that does not correspond to a name of a business listing comprises:

clustering the search queries according to a geographic location associated with each search query; and

identifying, from one of the clusters, a term that does not correspond to a name of a business listing.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein identifying the term as a name of a new business listing comprises:

adding the term to a work-list of likely new businesses for human review; and

receiving a confirmation following review that the term corresponds to a new business.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein adding the term to a work-list of likely new businesses for human review comprises:

associating with the term a geographic area selected based on the local search queries containing the term.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the threshold rate is dynamically selected based on a variability of a historical rate such that higher variability causes the threshold rate to increase.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein identifying the term as a name of a new business listing comprises:

associating with the name a geographic area defined by geographic locations indicated by the local search queries.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein the geographic locations are indicated by a geocoding an IP address from which the queries were received, a map extent displayed in a viewport of a interactive map with which the queries were received, or other terms appearing in the queries corresponding to geographic locations.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein the historical rate is based on non-local queries associated with a larger geographic area than the log of local search queries.

11. The method of claim 1, comprising assigning a priority to the term according to a difference between the rate based on the number of recent search queries and the threshold rate.

12. The method of claim 1, wherein the threshold rate is selected determined based on a variance of a rate of historical search queries with the term and a measure of central tendency of the rate of historical search queries with the term.

13. The method of claim 1, wherein the threshold rate is more than two standard deviations greater than the mean rate of historical search queries with the term.

14. The method of claim 1, wherein determining that a rate based on the number of recent search queries exceeds a threshold rate based on the number of historical search queries comprises:

normalizing a recent rate and a historical rate according to a total number of queries received during respective corresponding time periods.

15. The method of claim 1, wherein determining that a rate based on the number of recent search queries exceeds a threshold rate based on the number of historical search queries comprises:

calculating multiple recent rates each corresponding to queries of less than a different age; and

determining whether any of the recent rates exceeds a corresponding threshold historical rate, wherein the threshold historical rates for recent rates of a longer sampling period is lower than the threshold historical rates for recent rates of a shorter sampling period.

16. The method of claim 1, comprising:

adding the term to the business listing; and

displaying sending advertisements for display along with information from the business listing.

17. A tangible, non-transitory, machine-readable medium storing instructions that when executed by a data processing apparatus cause the data processing apparatus to perform operations comprising:

acquiring a log of local search queries submitted by users;

identifying, from the log of local search queries, a term that does not correspond to a name of a business listing;

determining a number of recent search queries containing the term and a number of historical search queries containing the term;

determining a threshold rate based on the number of historical search queries;

determining that a rate based on the number of recent search queries exceeds the threshold rate based on the number of historical search queries; and

identifying the term as a name of a new business listing; and

sending the term to a mobile device for confirmation that the new business is extant by a user;

receiving from the mobile device the confirmation; and

identifying the term as being confirmed as a new business.

18. A system, comprising:

one or more processors; and

memory storing instructions that when executed by the processors cause the processors to effectuate operations comprising;

acquiring a log of local search queries submitted by users;

identifying, from the log of local search queries, a term that does not correspond to a name of a business listing;

determining a number of recent search queries containing the term and a number of historical search queries containing the term;

determining a threshold rate based on the number of historical search queries;

determining that a rate based on the number of recent search queries exceeds the threshold rate based on the number of historical search queries, including;

calculating multiple recent rates each corresponding to queries of less than a different age; and

determining whether any of the recent rates exceeds a corresponding threshold historical rate, wherein the threshold historical rates for recent rates of a longer sampling period is lower than the threshold historical rates for recent rates of a shorter sampling period; and

identifying the term as a name of a new business listing.