Abstract: A vertical search engine may rank items based on both the quality of data associated with each item and the popularity of each item. The vertical search engine may access data associated with items from a variety of different sources, including feed sources and crawl sources. Data quality inputs are determined for each item based on the quality of the data associated with each respective item. In addition, popularity inputs are determined for each item based on user interest in each respective item. A global rankings score is then calculated for each item based on the data quality inputs and popularity inputs for each respective item. The global ranking score may be used to order search results for search queries in such a way that items from feed data and items from crawl data may be displayed in a unified manner, rather than being segregated by data source.

Abstract: A system and related techniques generate and maintain a unified product index, to perform searching and browsing in an online product, service, content or information catalog. A user investigating, for example, a set of retail offerings of digital cameras may for instance browse through a Web site layout or taxonomy to locate products of interest, such as cameras having resolution in the range of 3-4 megapixels or in the price range of $200-300. Alternatively, the user may input search terms in a search dialogue box to locate those or other features. Unlike conventional e-commerce platforms in which search may be performed against structured databases while browsing may access unstructured HTML or other descriptive material, according to the invention navigation and searching may be integrated and both access a structured index derived from product descriptions as well as traditional SQL or other structured data.