Patent ID: 8078624

Claim:
A method for searching content of a portal comprising: providing the portal comprising at least one portal page having a plurality of portal content elements at least one of which is a secure portal content element wherein each of the portal content elements is a portion of a portal page; associating each secure portal content element with a unique identifier, wherein the unique identifier is a uniform resource locator and is different than a uniform resource locator for the portal page; indexing each secure portal content element by a keyword; receiving search parameters and credentials from a user; generating a preliminary result set satisfying the search parameters and including at least one of the secure portal content elements indexed by keyword and associated with the unique identifier; for each secure portal content element included in the preliminary result set, using the credentials and the unique identifier for that secure portal content element to determine whether the user is permitted to access that secure portal content element; responsive to determining, for each secure portal content element included in the preliminary result set, whether the user is permitted to access that secure portal content element, using the preliminary result set to generate a final result set satisfying the search criteria and including at least one secure portal content element; and presenting to the user a result identification identifying the secure portal content elements that are included in the final result set and which the user is permitted to access, wherein the result identification distinguishes all secure portal content elements that are included in the final result set and which the user is permitted to access, from any secure portal content elements that are included in the final result set and to which the user is denied access.