In various Google patents you can find the terms entity types and entity classes or domains. Certain entity types and domains have a similar set of attributes and thus form a group. For example, the domain “ person ” or “ human ” can always be assigned attributes such as place of birth , place of residence , date of birth , etc. This clearly defines the domain and the associated entity types.
An entity type and domain describes a group of entities that can iceland phone number data be described using similar attributes. In Larry Page's example above, an entity type could be CEO or Entrepreneur.
In the very good book Entity Oriented Search by Krisztian Balog you can find the following description for entity types:
Entities may be categorized into multiple entity types (or types for short). Types can also be thought of as containers (semantic categories) that group together entities with similar properties. An analogy can be made to object oriented programming, whereby an entity of a type is like an instance of a class.
Relationship between entity classes in ontologies
There are databases such as YAGO or the DBpedia Ontology that represent relationships between entity classes or entity types. The basis for DBpedia Ontology is Wikipedia. In the following excerpt from DBpedia Ontology, entity types (rounded rectangles) are related to higher-level entity classes via ascending arrows. For example, the entity types athlete and racing driver are assigned to the entity class "person". Attributes connecting types and classes are shown with the dashed arrows.
Excerpt from DBpedia Ontology; Source: Entity-Oriented Search – Krisztian Balog
The whole thing then represents an ontology that maps the relationships between classes, types and thus also entities.
How relevant is an attribute for an entity, entity type or class?
By weighting the attributes for each entity, Google can determine how relevant a certain attribute is for an entity. Google can also use this to determine the relevance of the entity for a search query for this attribute.
The Google patent Identifying and ranking attributes of entities shows an approach of how something like this could work.
According to this patent, attributes can be assigned to entities and weighted by entering certain search term combinations.
One innovative aspect of the subject matter described in this specification is embodied in methods that include the actions of: identifying queries in query data; determining, in each of the queries, (i) an entity-descriptive portion that refers to an entity and (ii) a suffix; determining a count of a number of times the one or more queries were submitted; estimating, based on the count, an entity-level count of query submissions that include the particular suffix and are considered to refer to a first entity; determining that the entity is a particular type of entity; determining a type-level count of the query submissions that include the first suffix and are estimated to refer to entities of the particular type of entity; and assigning a score to the particular suffix based on the entity-level count and the type-level count.
Using this method, Google could determine which information about entities of a certain entity type is displayed in the knowledge panel. Furthermore, in the case of ambiguous statements, it could be determined which attribute is the most relevant. Based on the example above.
Here is an example:
Larry Page is an entrepreneur, computer scientist and engineer. Which of these three statements is the most relevant or accurate?
The more people search for “Larry Page entrepreneur,” the more accurate the attribute “entrepreneur” is.