Patent ID: 8321400

Claim:
A method of presenting search results in response to an end-user query, said search results being combined from results from a plurality of indexes stored at at least one computing device, each of said search results having an associated key field, said method comprising: (i) querying index entries of each of said plurality of indexes to obtain a set of matching search results for each index, each matching search result having a match score; (ii) for each of said plurality of indexes, retrieving a stored relative priority value assigned by an administrator to each of said plurality of indexes, wherein each said relative priority value is applicable to all search results obtained from one of said plurality of indexes and wherein at least one of said plurality of indexes has a highest assigned priority; (iii) combining said matching search results from said plurality of indexes into a merged list of ordered search results including search results from each of said plurality of indexes based on said match score of each matching search result and based on said relative priority value of each of said plurality of indexes as assigned by said administrator, in which any search result from an index having a lower stored relative priority value for which an associated key field is identical to the associated key field of a matching search result in said index having said highest stored relative priority value is discarded, in favor of said matching search result from said highest priority index.