Patent ID: 7756877

Claim:
A machine implemented method of compressing results of a search, the method comprising: receiving a list identifying items containing a search term, the items being listed in order by each item's unique identifier; accumulating compression cost statistics for the list, the statistics tracking compression costs associated with available encoding methods for separately compressing each item's unique identifier; determining a best encoding for each item in the list, wherein the best encoding for an item in the list is an available encoding method that separately compresses the item's unique identifier into a least amount of storage space in a chunk of output based on comparing the compression costs associated with available encoding methods for compressing the item's unique identifier; annotating each item in the list in a first order by each item's unique identifier with an annotation indicating the best encoding for each of the items; and determining whether to encode each item in the list in a same or new chunk of output based on the best encoding for each of the items, wherein the best encoding for the item is one of a plurality of available encoding methods selected from any of a bitmap encoding method, an include encoding method, and an exclude encoding method.