Methods and Apparatus for Entity Search
Methods and apparatus that deliver a searching experience that is substantially akin to consultation with a human expert, and that satisfies a user's information need in fulfilling projects such as purchasing, shopping, procurement, bartering, requesting for quotes, in online retail, traditional retail, wholesale, health care, travel, real estate, restaurant-going, entertainment, logistics, and sourcing are disclosed. Search results often contain entities that provide services and products. Records being searched are associated with industry sectors in a broad sense. Industry sector information is first derived from a user query; and is used in determining relevant and adequate additional questions for a searcher, and in matching, ranking, and presenting search results.
1 . A method of facilitating a search, the method comprising:
deriving an industry sector from a user search query;
selecting an existing request for quotes (RFQs) from among a number of candidate RFQs as a function of the search query and of the industry sector;
requesting additional information from a user by asking questions that are based on:
(a) selected existing fields of the RFQs; and
(b) modified on-the-fly fields of the RFQs that are modified based on the user query;
submitting a new RFQs created from the additional information as a second query to a search engine; and
presenting search results obtained from the search engine to a user via a web interface.
2 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the modified on-the-fly fields comprise newly created fields.
3 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the step of selecting a request for quotes includes selecting the request for quotes based on a language of the user search query.
4 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the step of requesting additional information includes presenting the questions in a normalized format.
5 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the second query comprises attribute-value pairs.
6 . The method of claim 5 , further comprising ranking the search results according to at least one of the attribute-value pairs.
7 . The method of claim 6 , wherein the ranking is according to a confidence measure.
8 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the step of requesting the additional information includes offering the user a price range as a selectable option.