Patent ID: 8005842

Claim:
A method performed by one or more data processing devices performing operations in accordance with the logic of a set of machine-readable instructions, the method comprising: receiving, at the one or more data processing devices, a description of a collection of search queries that human users have provided to a search engine for searching the Internet; the one or more data processing devices inferring attributes of entities from text of individual search queries in the collection, wherein the inferred attributes appear in the text of the search queries from which the attributes are inferred, wherein inferring attributes of entities from the text of individual search queries comprises matching text extract patterns to the text of the individual search queries; the one or more data processing devices refining the attributes inferred from the text of the search queries after the inference of attributes from the text of the search queries, the refining of the attributes yielding a refined attribute set; the one or more data processing devices establishing associations, in one or more data structures, between the attributes in the refined attribute set and identifiers of entities characterized by the attributes, wherein associating the attributes in the refined attribute set with identifiers of entities comprises: the one or more data processing devices weighting the attributes in the refined attribute set; and using the one or more data processing devices scoring the attributes in the refined attribute set based, at least in part, on the weighting; and the one or more data processing devices making the one or more data structures that include the associations of the attributes in the refined attribute set and entities available.