Patent ID: 8589399

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for determining characteristic terms for an entity, the method comprising: identifying one or more resources relating to the entity, each resource including a plurality of terms; identifying a plurality of candidate terms from the plurality of terms; identifying a business type associated with the entity; identifying one or more resources associated with other entities having the same business type; determining, via one or more processors and for each of the plurality of candidate terms: a first frequency with which the candidate term appears in the one or more resources related to the entity; a second frequency with which the candidate term appears in the one or more resources associated with other entities in the identified business type; a relative frequency for the candidate term based on the first frequency and the second frequency; and a weighted relative frequency for the candidate term based on the relative frequency of the candidate term and how frequently the entity is selected as a search result when presented in response to a search query that includes the candidate term; identifying, via one or more processors, one or more of the candidate terms as characteristic terms for the entity based on the weighted relative frequency of each candidate term; and associating the identified characteristic terms with the entity in a data repository.