determining whether the one or more terms of the query, in any particular order, matches a commercial query pattern in a list of commercial query patterns, where the list of commercial query patterns includes patterns associated with one or more host names or domain names that include more than a particular number of hyphens, and identifying the query as a commercial query when the one or more terms of the query, in any particular order, matches the commercial query pattern in the list of commercial query patterns, and process the query based at least in part on whether the query is identified as commercial; rank documents in a first manner when the query is not identified as commercial; and rank documents in a second, different manner when the query is identified as commercial.
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If phrases and/or keywords show up several times in hyphenated domain names, it may be an indication that the phrases and/or keywords are likely part of a commercial query.
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It is very common to see domain names that include a single hyphen, but when two, three, or more hyphens are present, this is often an indication that these domain names are associated with companies that are attempting to trick search engines into ranking their web pages more highly.
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or example, it is possible to obtain a list of all .com domain names, .net domain names, .edu domain names, and .org domain names that exist on a given day from such companies as Network Solutions, Verisign, and the like. From this list, server 120 may obtain the list of domain names that contain greater than a predetermined number of hyphens.
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For example, assume that the domain name list includes the domain name "buy-cheap-credit-cards-online.com." Server 120 may form the following exemplary n-grams for this domain name: "credit cards," "buy cards," "cheap cards," "buy credit cards," "cheap credit cards," "buy cheap cards," "buy card online," "cheap cards online," "credit cards online," "buy credit cards online," "buy cheap credit cards," "buy cheap credit cards online." Other n-grams may also be formed.
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