Patent Document ID: 7574426
Application ID: 11097468

Base Claim:
1. A method in a computing system for processing a query made up of one or more query terms to identify relevant items, comprising: receiving the query to a search engine able to utilize a search index to generate a search result, the search index containing an entry for each item having both (1) one or more item matching fields that contain query terms having a direct association with the item and (2) one or more item selection fields that contain one or more query terms each repeated a number of times representing a level of relevance of each of the one or more query terms to the item, the level of relevance based at least in part upon previous selection actions performed by users with respect to the item, each of the users having submitted a previous query including at least one of the one or more query terms and having received a previous search result identifying the item; determining an ordered set of items relating to the received query using the search index and the one or more query terms of the received query, an order of the ordered set of items being determined at least in part by generating a ranking score for each item in the ordered set of items, the ranking score being generated for each item in the ordered set of items by assigning a field score for each occurrence of one of the one or more query terms in one of the item selection and item information fields and summing the field scores for each item; and generating a search result made up of the ordered set of items, wherein the search engine is able to generate the search result without modifying operation of the search engine.

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Claim 6:
6. The method of claim 1 wherein the items included in the generated query result with which are associated one or more of the query terms of the received query have textual metadata that matches one or more of the query terms of the received query.