System and method for locating and presenting electronic documents to a user

One or more tangible computer-readable storage media having computer-executable instructions embodied thereon for performing a method of locating and presenting to a user electronic documents most-likely of interest to the user, the method comprising:

• receiving search terms to be located in a set of electronic documents, wherein the search terms include at least three terms;
• identifying one or more documents within said set of documents that contain at least one occurrence of each of the search terms;
• selecting an anchor term from said search terms, wherein the search terms not selected as the anchor term are non-anchor search terms;
• associating placement information with the non-anchor search terms, wherein said placement information indicates a desired placement for said non-anchor search terms in relation to said anchor term;
• locating within at least one of said identified documents one or more occurrences of said anchor term;
• for each located occurrence of said anchor term, producing a set of search term occurrences by selecting an occurrence of each of the search terms which is closest to the desired placement of the search terms in relation to the located occurrence of said anchor term;
• associating with each of said set of search term occurrences a value indicating a measure of the variation between the selected occurrences of each of the search terms and the desired placement of the search terms;
• and
• utilizing said value to present to the user one or more electronic documents having search term occurrences with the least variation from the desired placement for the search terms.

A computerized method for locating and presenting to a user Web pages most-likely of interest to the user, comprising:

• receiving a search phrase including search terms to be located in a set of Web pages, wherein said search terms are received in a placement relative to one another, wherein the search terms include at least three terms;
• identifying one or more Web pages from said set of Web pages that contain at least one occurrence of each of the search terms;
• selecting an anchor term from said search terms, wherein the search terms not selected as the anchor term are non-anchor search terms;
• finding one or more sets of search term occurrences within said identified Web pages, wherein said sets have an occurrence of each of the search terms;
• and
• ranking said identified Web pages according to the variation between the received placement of the search terms relative to one another in the search phrase and the placement of the non-anchor search terms relative to the anchor term in the one or more sets of search term occurrences.

A computerized method for providing an Internet search engine that presents a listing of Web pages having content of likely interest to a user, comprising:

• receiving a search phrase having search terms, wherein the search phrase include at least three search terms;
• identifying one or more Web pages that contain at least one occurrence of each of the search terms;
• finding one or more sets of search term occurrences within said identified Web pages, wherein said sets have an occurrence of each of the search terms;
• selecting an anchor term from said search terms, wherein the search terms not selected as the anchor term are non-anchor search terms;
• ranking said one or more sets of search term occurrences according to the variation between the location of the search terms relative to one another in the search phrase and the placement of the non-anchor search terms relative to the anchor term in said one or more sets of search term occurrences;
• and
• presenting a listing of one or more Web pages in accordance with said ranking.