US Patent 8156099 Interpreting local search queries

A search query may be interpreted as a number of possible interpretations, and each interpretation may be explored before the results of the search are sent to a user. In one embodiment, a device may split the search query into partitions. Each of the partitions may be submitted, as a search query, to search repositories. Confidence scores based on the results returned from the repositories may be used to determine a measure of confidence of the repository in the search query interpretation.