Patent ID: 8224847

Claim:
A method of providing information to searching users of a computing environment comprising: parsing a query having a number of query terms; identifying a searching user; communicating with at least one information source having information associated with a pool of potentially relevant individuals; identifying a number of relevant individuals from the pool of potentially relevant individuals based in part on the number of query terms and the searching user, the identifying including: using a textual matching ranking feature and a plurality of managed properties to determine managed property parameters for the potentially relevant individuals; using a social distance ranking feature to determine a social distance parameter for the potentially relevant individuals; and, using a proximity ranking feature to determine a proximity parameter based in part on a subset of the plurality of managed properties and a limited number of the potentially relevant individuals including determining additional ranking weights based in part on a predefined proximity weight for each managed property of the subset using a rational transformation, wherein the proximity ranking feature is enabled for the subset using an extract occurrence feature; and, providing the number of relevant individuals to the searching user including determining a relevancy value for each of the number of relevant individuals, each relevancy value based in part on the managed property parameters, the social distance parameter, a levels to the top (LTT) ranking feature to determine a LTT parameter used to generate a multiplier to adjust a predefined weight of the LTT ranking feature by transforming a corresponding value using an inverse rational transformation in generating the multiplier, and the proximity parameter.