Not Brands but Entities: The Influence of Named Entities on Google and Yahoo Search Results, SEO by the SEA (Aug 19)

Google may be identifying entities (person, place, or thing) as part of the search process.

“The process in that patent may mean that if Google recognizes when a search query involves a particular entity, and if the entity can be associated with a specific web site, it might show multiple results for that site. For example, Google recognizes that “SEO by the Sea” is an entity, and when I perform a search such as “SEO by the Sea entities,” (without the quotation marks), Google will show a number of search results from SEO by the Sea:”

Thanks to Metaweb, Google might be able to keep a cross-reference / see-also index that identifies different names for a particular entity – such as UN = United Nations.

Yahoo is doing something with named entities and interpreting the query accordingly.