Abstract: A system and method and method for personalized searching of a computer network, such as a local area network or the world wide web, is disclosed. The method involves submitting a user search query, submitting the search query and a user profile to a search engine, processing the search query based on a user profile to calculate the relevancy of search results, and returning highly personalized search results to the user based upon the calculated relevancy. The user profile may include declared and observed information. Declared information includes information provided by the user, such as, for example, individual and demographic information. Observed information is gathered by the system by reviewing user word usage gathered from the user's documents, machine configuration, e-mail and instant messages, and other areas. The system may compare words to a baseline to determine the relative incidence of word usage for inclusion into the user's profile.

Abstract: A text search and retrieval system which builds an index representing every word in stored files created by a variety of applications, searches for requested words using the index and ranks the files based on the relative strength of match with the search request. From a display of the ranked filenames, the user can select a file, whereupon the file is tested to determine which one of a plurality of file viewers to deploy. The corresponding viewer is automatically loaded and used to display consecutive screens of information from the selected file. Further searching within the file is accomplished within the context of the viewer by matching character strings of a new search request with words in the items of the file produced by the viewer. To work on a file in view, the user can invoke the software application which created the file by loading the application corresponding to the viewer along with the desired file, without abandoning the search system.