Abstract: A system and method for extracting facts from documents. A fact is extracted from a first document. The attribute and value of the fact extracted from the first document are used as a seed attribute-value pair. A second document containing the seed attribute-value pair is analyzed to determine a contextual pattern used in the second document. The contextual pattern is used to extract other attribute-value pairs from the second document. The extracted attributes and values are stored as facts.

Abstract: A system and method for corroborating a set of facts. If the anchor text of the references to a document matches the name of a set of facts, the referenced document is used to corroborate the set of facts. By analyzing the anchor text of the references to the document, the system is capable of determining if a document is relevant to the set of facts. These documents can then be used to corroborate or refute the facts, thereby improving their overall quality.

Abstract: Methods and systems for processing facts with one or more janitors. Facts are extracted from documents on the Internet or other sources. Facts can be any data or series of data in the documents including an attribute and a file. The data can be in the form of text, graphics, or multimedia content. Janitors transform facts responsive to inferring a certain condition associated with facts. The condition can be related to one or more of an attribute, a value, or an object of a fact being analyzed. For example, janitors can perform normalization, remove or merge similar or duplicate facts, segregate multiple values of a fact, and the like. An administrator can select which janitors are applied to facts and in which order.

Abstract: A method and system of learning, or bootstrapping, facts from semi-structured text is described. Starting with a set of seed facts associated with an object, documents associated with the object are identified. The identified documents are checked to determine if each has at least a first predefined number of seed facts. If a document does have at least a first predefined number of seed facts, a contextual pattern associated with the seed facts is identified and other instances of content in the document matching the contextual pattern are identified. If the document includes at least a second predefined number of the other instances of content matching the contextual pattern, then facts may be extracted from the other instances.