Patent ID: 7424467

Claim:
A method for indexing data, comprising: receiving different sections of a document at different times, wherein the different sections include a context section and an anchor text section; generating sort keys for each token of multiple tokens in the different sections, wherein the sort keys are used to create posting lists that simultaneously are ordered by token and by document identifier for each token, wherein a sort key includes a token type, a token, a document identifier, a document section, and an offset in a document; and for each of the multiple tokens: determining if a data field associated with the token is a fixed width or a variable width, wherein the data field is fixed width for storing document content and variable width for storing document metadata; when the data field is a fixed width, designating the token as one for which fixed width sort is to be performed; and when the data field is a variable length, designating the token as one for which a variable width sort is to be performed.