Patent ID: 7801879

Claim:
An information search system for providing interest group searching performed by human searchers, comprising: a processor; at least one searcher computer system performing a search in response to a query from an information seeker; at least one search system receiving notification that the interest group searching is desired, presenting a list of interest groups having human searcher members with specialty and rating, receiving selection of a desired interest group, prompting for and receiving a username and password from the information seeker, comparing the username and password with a stored username and password, determining whether the information seeker may submit the query to a human searcher member of the desired interest group or a searcher who is not the human searcher member based on the comparing, and accepting the query from the information seeker; an interest group database including an interest group identifier field including an anonymous identifier of the desired interest group, an interest group rating field indicating a rating of the desired interest group based at least in part on searches performed by the human searcher members of the desired interest group, a search specialty field indicating a shared interest of the human searcher members of the desired interest group unrelated to a subject matter index, an assigned searchers field including an identifier of the human searcher members of the desired interest group, and a keywords and categories field indicating the subject matter index to which the desired interest group is assigned; a user system including at least one information seeker interface using which the desired interest group is selected, the list of interest groups being presented in an order based at least in part on the rating of the interest groups; an interest group searcher database including a searcher identifier field, the interest group identifier field, a searcher username field, a searcher verification code field, a searcher rating field, and a related interest groups field; and an authorized information seekers database including the interest group identifier field, an authorized user id field, an authorized user username field, and an authorized user password field, and where at least one of the human searcher members is selected to perform the search in response to the query from the information seeker based on a combination of a category of the search and an interest common to the human searcher members of the desired interest group in accordance with information indicated in the search specialty field, and the stored username and password.