Patent ID: 7792811

Claim:
A method for searching on the Internet or intranet in a computer system using an intelligent index, the method comprising: a user entering a query containing one or more search terms in a search window; sending the one or more search terms to other search engines; searching the one or more search terms in the intelligent index, wherein the intelligent index consists of a known index, a semantic index, and an unknown index; wherein the known index comprises a plurality of terms, each term in the known index being associated with at least one resource, and at least one term in the known index being associated with guiding information; wherein the semantic index comprises a plurality of terms, each term in the semantic index being associated with at least one other term in the semantic set of terms, each term in the semantic index being associated with a context; wherein the unknown index comprises a plurality of search terms, each search term in the unknown index being associated with a set of results produced by the other search engines in response to a query with the search term, each result from the other search engines containing a weight, wherein the weight for each result is incremented when a user searching for the search term selects the result; wherein searching the one or more terms in the intelligent index comprises: sending the one or more search terms to other search engines; searching the known index for the one or more search terms and adding any results from the known index to a list of returned results; after searching the known index for the one or more search terms, searching the semantic index for the one or more search terms by transforming the query by performing at least one of: adding additional search terms to the query, deleting search terms from the query, and rewording the one or more search terms of the query; adding the results from searching the semantic index to the list of returned results; after searching the semantic index, searching the unknown index for the one or more search terms; if there are results from searching the unknown index, adding the results from the unknown index to the list of returned results; adding results received from the other search engines to the known index, the semantic index, and the unknown index; displaying the list of returned results to the user; wherein the one or more search terms are associated with guiding information; displaying the guiding information to the user, wherein the guiding information includes the category of the one or more search terms, the subcategory of the one or more search terms, most popular results from the one or more search terms, lowest local price for popular results, lowest national price for popular results, average local price for popular results, and average national price for popular results.