Patent Document ID: 9846901
Application ID: 14576023

Base Claim:
1. A method comprising: locating, by a document analyzer of a question answering (QA) system, a plurality of natural language product reviews about a first product by scraping a plurality of web pages; augmenting, by a domain modeler of the QA system, an ontology, by including in the ontology links to the plurality of natural language product reviews located by scraping the plurality of web pages, wherein the ontology further includes a first product concept node representing the first product and one or more related concept nodes each representing a characteristic of the first product, wherein the ontology further includes, for each of the one or more related concept nodes, a relationship between the first product concept node and the related concept node, the relationship being encoded as a data item in the ontology; receiving, by the QA system from a user, a request for recommendation of a product matching a characteristic specified in the request; identifying, by the QA system, the first product for recommendation in response to the request, at least in part by searching the ontology for the characteristic specified in the request, wherein searching the ontology comprises matching the specified characteristic to a first related concept node of the one or more related concept nodes, the first related concept node representing the specified characteristic, and traversing the relationship in the ontology from the first related concept node of the specified characteristic to the first product concept node of the first product, wherein at least one of the plurality of natural language product reviews provides an indication that the first product matches the specified characteristic; retrieving, by the QA system, at least portions of at least two of the plurality of natural language product reviews using the links in the ontology; and presenting to the user, by the QA system within a user interface in response to the request, the retrieved at least portions of the at least two natural language product reviews in support of a recommendation of the identified first product.

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Claim 6:
6. The method of claim 1 , wherein the characteristic specified in the request is a first characteristic, wherein identifying the first product for recommendation comprises determining, based at least in part on analysis of a first natural language product review, that the first product also matches a second characteristic specified in the request.