Abstract: Providing offers based on a search query comprises receiving and storing offers from merchants. The system identifies a potential merchant name from search query terms and identifies offers from a database that are not associated with the potential merchant name. The system compares the potential merchant name to the identified offers and determines if the potential merchant name appears in a number of the identified offers that is below a threshold. If so, the system determines that the query term identified as a potential merchant system is likely to be an actual merchant name. In this case, the offer distribution system may select only offers from the actual merchant to present to the user.

Abstract: An improved query suggestion system can allow a user to more effectively search for items they would like to purchase online. The present invention provides a computer-implemented method for generating query suggestions based on user-generated content. A user may begin an online shopping venture by entering a keyword into the search function on a shopping website or other search engine interface. The search engine can launch a search of user generated content on the Internet, such as product related blogs, product reviews, or question-and-answer articles. The search engine can extract frequently repeated bigrams from the content. The search engine may combine the bigrams to generate candidate composite words and select a final query suggestion list from the candidate words. The query suggestion list is displayed to the user in the search interface. The user may select one of the suggested queries if it more accurately defines his search.