Patent ID: 7634475

Claim:
A system for determining an association of keywords to an item, the system comprising: a data store for storing information about the item, wherein the information stored on the data store includes two or more characterization fields that describe the item; an interface for obtaining one or more keywords; and a data processing component having instructions that, when executed, cause the data processing component to: in response to receiving a query including multiple keywords, determine a presence of an associated term for each of the multiple keywords in any of the characterization fields for the item; determine keyword combinations for each of the characterization fields for the item, each keyword combination comprising one or more associated terms present in a respective characterization field or no associated terms for t null keyword combination; determine a plurality of keyword field combinations, each keyword field combination including one keyword combination from each characterization field for the item, each associated term appearing at most once in each keyword field combination; calculate a relevancy score for at least a subset of the determined keyword field combinations with respect to the received query, a relevancy score calculation for a determined keyword field combination capable of being skipped if it is determined that the relevancy score for the determined keyword field combination is less than a previously determined relevancy score; select the keyword field combination with an optimal relevancy score for the item for use in ranking the item in results corresponding to the query; and provide for display a ranked list of items associated with the one or more keywords based at least in part upon the optimal relevance score for each item in the list.