Patent attributes
A product catalog system includes a product catalog having information regarding products for sale online by various merchants. The product catalog system transmits information regarding products in response to queries for a target product and also transmits information regarding products that serve as alternatives to the target product. The product catalog system includes a product alternatives module that identifies product alternatives based on information regarding a multitude of received queries and information regarding products that were selected from other products presented in response to the queries. The alternatives module computes an association weight for pairs of products that indicates the likelihood that the two products are alternatives. This association weight is based on the query and product information and further based on the number of times that the two products were the subject of a comparison query.
