A facility for identifying purchasing opportunities within a set of
purchasing opportunities that are similar to a distinguished purchasing
opportunity is described. The distinguished purchasing opportunity has
descriptive information associated with it. For each of several terms
occurring in this descriptive information, the facility generates a term
score. Each term score reflects the extent to which the occurrence of the
term and the descriptive information associated with the distinguished
purchasing opportunity differentiates the distinguished purchasing
opportunity from auto purchasing opportunities in the set. The facility
then selects as key words the terms occurring in the descriptive
information associated with the distinguished purchasing opportunity that
have the highest term scores. The facility identifies purchasing
opportunities of the set containing the selected key words, and
establishes a purchasing opportunity score for each identified purchasing
opportunity by summing the term score of the key words occurring in
information associated with the identified purchasing opportunities.