Abstract: Systems, techniques, and machine-readable instructions for inferring attributes from search queries. In one aspect, a method includes receiving a description of a collection of search queries, inferring attributes of entities from the description of the collection of search queries, associating the inferred attributes with identifiers of entities characterized by the attributes, and making the associations of the attributes and entities available.

Abstract: Methods and systems for identification of paraphrases from an index of information items and associated sentence fragments are described. One method described comprises identifying a pair of sentence fragments each having a same associated information item from an index, wherein the index comprises a plurality of information items and associated sentence fragments, and identifying a paraphrase pair from the pair of sentence fragments.

Abstract: Methods and apparatus, including systems and computer program products, to acquire potential paraphrases from textual input. In one aspect, textual input is received, a first map is generated, where the key of the first map is an ngram identified in the textual input and the value associated with the key of the first map is a unique identifier, a second map is generated, where the key of the second map is an anchor identified from the ngram and the value associated with the key of the second map is one or more middle portions associated with the anchor, and a third map is generated, where the key of the third map is a potential paraphrase pair identified from the middle portions and the value associated with the key of the third map is the one or more unique anchors associated with the potential paraphrase pair.