Patent ID: 8661012

Claim:
A computer-implemented method comprising: obtaining candidate terms that a search engine has identified as being synonymous with a query phrase of an original search query, the query phrase including two or more query terms; obtaining one or more candidate terms that a search engine has identified as being synonymous with a portion of the query phrase, the portion of the query phrase including fewer than all of the query terms; comparing the candidate terms that the search engine has identified as being synonymous with the query phrase of the original search query, with the candidate query terms that the search engine has identified as being synonymous with the portion of the query phrase; determining that a particular candidate term has been identified by the search engine as being synonymous with both the query phrase and with the portion of the query phrase; automatically selecting by operation of a computer system a subset of the candidate terms that the search engine has identified as being synonymous with the original search query, wherein the subset excludes the particular candidate term that has been identified as being synonymous with both the query phrase and with the portion of the query phrase; and generating one or more alternative search queries using the original search query and the subset of the candidate terms.