Ranking passages by merging features from factoid answers

A method is provided that includes generating answer-passage pairs, each associated with a respective one of multiple feature vectors. The method includes, for each answer in the pairs, merging the feature vectors associated with any of the pairs that include the answer to obtain a merged answer vector. The method includes, for each passage in the pairs, (i) merging the feature vectors associated with any of the pairs that includes the passage to obtain a merged passage vector, (ii) merging the feature vectors from the merged answer vector for each answer that is associated with the passage via at least one of the pairs to obtain a merged passage-answer vector, and (iii) concatenating the merged passage vector and the merged passage-answer vector to obtain a concatenated passage vector. The method includes ranking the concatenated passage vector for each passage to obtain a ranked list of passages with associated confidence scores.