Patent ID: 8700494

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for identifying product variants, comprising: receiving, by a computer, product offers from a plurality of merchants, each product offer comprising a product title comprising a variant attribute value that identifies a variant of a product subject of the product offer; identifying, by the computer, at least one set of product offers for each merchant that are likely to be variants based on the product title of the product offers and assigning a merchant cluster identifier to each identified set of product offers; grouping, by the computer, the product offers of each identified set of product offers with product catalog entries based on the product subject of each product offer, wherein the computer maps the product offers to the product catalog entries, and wherein each product catalog entry comprises a particular product variant; for each product catalog entry, assigning, by the computer, the merchant cluster identifier assigned to each product offer of each identified set of product offers grouped with the product catalog entry, wherein the merchant cluster identifiers become associated with the corresponding product catalog entry; grouping, by the computer, product catalog entries that comprise overlapping associated merchant cluster identifiers; for each group of product catalog entries, determining, by the computer, which merchant cluster identifier is associated with the most product catalog entries; classifying, by the computer, the product catalog entries associated with the merchant cluster identifier determined to have the most product catalog entries as a set of product catalog entries that comprise variants of the same product; for each set of product catalog entries that comprise variants of the same product, determining, by the computer, variant product attribute values based on the variant product attribute values of the product offers grouped with the set of product catalog entries; and causing, by the computer, the variant attribute values of the set of product catalog entries to be presented.