Abstract: Methods and apparatus are described for identifying similar products or services for the purpose of making relevant recommendations to an online consumer. Products and services are represented by associated vectors which include values for each of a plurality of attributes of the corresponding product or service. One or more similar products or services are identified relative to a reference product or service set with reference to the distance between the end points of the respective vectors in the associated vector space.

Abstract: Various embodiments provide a method for randomly selecting a region on a map for testing and a map of the region can be generated using multiple map rendering engines. A screenshot of each of the generated maps can be obtained and text associated with map labels, such as street, city, and attraction names, can be recognized using an optical character recognition (OCR) engine. At this point, the recognized text from each rendering engine can then be compared to identify at least one error or inconsistency. In at least one embodiment, categories of errors that need most attention in the specific geographic areas can be identified and a human quality assurance tester can isolate these instances and narrow down the same to identify the rendering or data problem.