Method and system for enhancing the relevance and usefulness of search results, such as those of web searches, through the application of user's judgment

A method for extracting enhanced search results by making use of a user's judgment, the method comprising the steps of:

• creating a database of sources of information on a server;
• enabling the user to create source profiles of selected sources by identifying specific portions of content of the selected sources, specifying the specific portions of the content to be extracted and organizing the sources using labels;
• enabling the user to create a user profile by assigning desired sources to the user, and tagging a plurality of attributes to the desired sources of information;
• crawling through the selected and the desired sources to identify and extract fresh content from the selected and the desired sources by using the source profiles and the user profiles;
• storing the extracted content in an automatically updatable central repository on the server;
• filtering updated contents of the central repository according to a plurality of predefined search parameters and displaying the filtered contents to the user on a user device;
• enabling an administrator amongst the users to tag content of the central repository through a hierarchical central labelling scheme while enabling the individual user to tag the content with personal labels that can be modified at will;
• providing the user with the ability to combine the content of the central repository with other content either created by the user or imported from a directory of internally generated, and other including previously and currently imported documents;
• providing the user with an ability to combine the repository content with an output of communication events including annotation, comments forwarded with documents, forums, chats, conferences and notes;
• providing the user with the ability to share the combined content and the labels used to organize it with other users in particular communities of practice using a role-based user management system;
• providing a facility to search through the combined and organized content making use of a multiplicity of search and query parameters to widen or narrow the search in order to enhance the relevance of the results;
• and
• displaying the search results to the user on the user device.