The Google Natural Language API, part of the Google Cloud suite, is a powerful machine learning tool used for semantic analysis, primarily focused on extracting insights from text and user queries. It functions as a core component for semantic query entity analysis.
The API identifies and classifies named entities (people, locations, organizations, events, etc.) present within the text, classifying the underlying concept to map it to real-world entities. Critically, it returns detailed data necessary for advanced analysis, including Entity Types, the Entity Salience Score (prominence), the Sentiment Score, and Sentiment Magnitude.
In practice, the data retrieved from the Google NLP API forms the foundation for entity-based search intent classification models. These models analyze the extracted entities and their associated sentiment and salience scores, combining them with heuristics to produce a final, nuanced intent label (Informational, Transactional, etc.).