Abstract: A system and method for automatically generating personalized user profiles and for utilizing the generated profiles to perform adaptive Internet or computer data searches is provided. In accordance with the present invention, particular linguistic patterns and their frequency of recurrence are extracted from personal texts provided by the users of the system of the present invention and stored in a user profile data file such that the user profile data file is representative of the user's overall linguistic patterns and the frequencies of recurrence thereof. All documents in a remote computer system, such as the Internet, are likewise analyzed and their linguistic patterns and pattern frequencies are also extracted and stored in corresponding document profiles. When a search for particular data is initiated by the user, linguistic patterns are also extracted from a search string provided by the user into a search profile.