Patent Document ID: 9213768
Application ID: 12780685
Patent Flag: 1

Claim One:
1. A method, comprising: receiving, at one or more computing devices, a query that includes a word having multiple meanings, having multiple senses, or that corresponds to multiple entities; when the word is not recognized by the one or more computing devices: determining, based at least in part on relative placement of alphabetic characters, numeric characters, and non-alphanumeric characters of the word, one or more entities to which the word corresponds, or choosing, based at least in part on the relative placement of alphabetic characters, numeric characters, and non-alphanumeric characters of the word, one meaning or sense; when the word is recognized by the one or more computing devices and the word refers to multiple entities, determining, with one or more computing devices, the entities to which the word corresponds; when the word corresponds to multiple entities in a same category, ranking, with one or more computing devices, the multiple entities in the same category to which the word corresponds using a set of attributes common to entities in the category, wherein the set of attributes is different than other sets of attributes common to entities in other categories; when the word is recognized by the one or more computing devices and the word has multiple meanings or senses, ranking, with one or more computing devices, the multiple meanings or senses of the word based on attributes of a user; when the word is recognized by the one or more computing devices and the word has multiple meanings or senses, ranking, with one or more computing devices, one or more meanings or senses of the word based on a measure of popularity of the one or more meanings or senses; when the word corresponds to multiple entities in a same category, or the word is recognized by the one or more computing devices and the word has multiple meanings or senses, choosing, with one or more computing devices, one meaning or sense based on the rankings; and generating, with one or more computing devices, either: a new query and query results based on the one meaning or sense, or query results based on the one meaning or sense.