Approximate template matching for natural language queries

Systems and methods provide a media guidance application that recognizes a plurality of natural language search queries for identifying a set of search results. For example, a user may want to determine when the Yankees are playing their next baseball game. The user may structure their query in multiple ways, such as, "When are the Yankees playing?" "What time is the Yankees game?" "When is the next Yankees baseball game?" The user would expect the same result, a description of when the Yankees are playing, regardless of how the query is structured. The systems and methods enable a user to use a plurality of search queries when searching for items or information to get desired results.