Patent ID: 7979459
Filing Date: 2011-07-12
Classification: G06Q,Y10S

Abstract:
1. A computer-readable storage medium having computer-executable instructions, which when executed by a computing device cause the computing device to perform actions, comprising: extracting product information regarding a product from one or more Web sites, the product information including one or more tokens that describe the product; normalizing the extracted product information by normalizing the tokens that describe the product; identifying, within the extracted product information, key information for matching the extracted product information to unique products in a product authority database by selecting key terms according to relevance in matching until a sum of values of the selected key terms exceeds a threshold; querying the product authority database using the selected key terms to obtain from the product authority database a list of potential matches comprising one or more products in the product authority database that potentially match the extracted product information; assigning a confidence level to each of the potential matches obtained from the product authority database by filling product fields for the extracted product information and calculating a distance between each non-empty product field in the product fields for the extracted product information and a corresponding product authority field in the product authority database for each of the products in the list of potential matches; determining whether any of the products in the list of potential matches obtained from the product authority database match the extracted product information based on the confidence level assigned to each of the potential matches; if at least one of the products in the list of potential matches obtained from the product authority database match the extracted product information, indicating that a match was found and providing a data structure including a unique identifier of each matching product in the product authority database for associating each matching product in the product authority database with the extracted product information; and if all of the products in the list of potential matches obtained from the product authority database do not match the extracted product information, indicating that no match was found.