Patent ID: 7958115

Claim:
A method for processing a query, the method comprising the computer-implemented steps of: providing to a client a page comprising content to be presented to a user, wherein said page includes code that, when executed by the client, causes the client to perform the steps of: associating, with a first portion of the content in said page, a first contextual search interface adapted to accept a query from the user; associating, with a second portion of the content in said page, a second contextual search interface adapted to accept a query from the user; associating with the first contextual search interface a first context vector derived from the first portion of the content; associating with the second contextual search interface a second context vector derived from the second portion of the content; wherein the first portion of the content in the page is different than the second portion of the content in the page; wherein the first contextual search interface is different than the second contextual search interface; wherein the first context vector is different than the second context vector; while displaying the first portion of the content and the first contextual search interface in the page, receiving a query from the user via the first contextual search interface; and transmitting the query with the first context vector to a search server for processing, wherein the search server is a server that is configured to (a) generate a search result using at least the query, the first context vector, and a plurality of hits obtained from searching a search corpus, and (b) return the search result to the user; wherein the method is performed by one or more computing devices.