1. A computer-implemented method to identify search results based on entity-based knowledge, the method comprising: receiving a search query that includes one or more entities; enumerating one or more entities from an entity-based knowledge store that may match entities in the received query; identifying one or more potentially matching entities from the enumerated entities, wherein a matching entity is one that may be a target of the query; ranking the identified potentially matching entities to distinguish a relative level of match between each identified entity and one or more entities in the received query; selecting one or more of the identified potentially matching entities as matching entities with which to go forward with a search; performing an entity-based search that narrows results by applying one or more of the top ranked, selected matching entities; ranking multiple results returned from the entity-based search to order the results by relevance to the received search query; and providing the ranked search results in response to the received query, wherein the preceding steps are performed by at least one processor.