Diversity evaluation in genealogy search

An information entropy-based metric is used to represent a degree of diversity of a search result of genealogical records. In response to a query, a data query server locates a set of multiple records that match the query. The records are classified into different record types based on the records' attributes. One or more distributions of numbers of records classified into each record type are determined. Each distribution corresponds to one of the subsets the records. For each distribution, an entropy value is determined. A cumulative entropy that corresponds to a sum of the entropy values of those distributions is then determined. The cumulative entropy may serve as the entropy-based metric of the search result. The cumulative entropy may also be normalized by an ideal cumulative entropy. The normalized metric allows the diversity of different search results to be compared across different queries that may generate different numbers of records.