SHORT TEXT LANGUAGE DETECTION USING GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION

A content-providing entity receives a relatively short text from a user and attempts to determine, automatically, based on that short text (and on other available clues), a language that the user can read and understand. The content-providing entity may then provide, to the user, documents that are written in the determined language. The content-providing entity may determine a language of the input text based on several factors in combination: (a) the service provider's “market,” which is determined based on at least a portion of the URL of the Internet site to which the user directed his browser; (b) the user's “region,” which is determined based on the source Internet Protocol (IP) address of the IP packets that the user sends to the Internet site; (c) the “script” in which the short user-entered text is written; and (d) a statistical analysis of the frequency of the characters present in the short user-entered text.