Patent ID: 8861896

Claim:
A method, comprising: providing a digital photo of an unidentified item; transmitting, over a network, the digital photo to an identification service; in response to transmitting the digital photo, receiving, over the network, item information from the identification service, wherein the item information includes a highest ranked textual identification information result about the item and includes information relating to a highest ranked source of a matched scanned image at the identification service, wherein the rank of the source is based on a predefined parameter; the identification service is automatically populated with scanned image data, for a plurality of scanned images from various sources, generated by a plurality of detection algorithms operating in parallel, wherein, for each scanned image, the scanned image data comprises scanned image metadata corresponding to each detection algorithm stored in a scanned image multi-layered data structure, the detection algorithms generate scanned image metadata with different metadata structures; the scanned image multi-layered data structure comprises a plurality of metadata layers corresponding to the different scanned image metadata structures generated by the detection algorithms; and the scanned image metadata is compared with other scanned imaged metadata and if there is a match, grouping image reference information for the matched images together; and displaying the textual identification information.