Abstract: An information retrieval system is disclosed, wherein the system includes a plurality of text search engines based on substantially different computational searching techniques. By activating each search engine with input from a user information request, the output from each of the search engines is combined into a single list of information items. A ranking process ranks the information items in the combined list by utilizing information item ordering data also received from each of the search engines as to the relevance of the information items output by the search engine to the user's request. Thus, by providing higher rankings to those information items determined to be most relevant to the user's request by each of (or a majority of) the search engines, these information items have been found to be highly consistent in satisfying the user's request for information.

Abstract: A methodology for retrieving textual data objects is disclosed. The information is treated in the statistical domain by presuming that there is an underlying, latent semantic structure in the usage of words in the data objects. Estimates to this latent structure are utilized to represent and retrieve objects. A user query is recouched in the new statistical domain and then processed in the computer system to extract the underlying meaning to respond to the query.