Abstract: Methods and apparatuses for searching electronically-stored information are described. Specifically, in a network providing for electronic commerce, a computer system provides a user with access to a set of electronic commerce pages, category pages and databases for locating products electronically. To locate products electronically, the user performs a search using multiple words. Different forms of the words in the search request are used to generate search hits, and hit vectors containing bits corresponding to the words comprising each search hit are used to indicate the search hits.