METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR GENERATING ACCURATE SEARCH RESULTS USING A CONTENT-INDEX

A method and system for generating accurate search results using a content-index is provided. In a preferred embodiment, a content-index search system is invoked in response to a query on a collection of objects. The collection of objects is indexed by the content-index and may, for example, be a corpus of documents indexed by the terms contained in the documents. The content-index search system uses the content-index to generate and store an initial search result in response to the query. Because the content-index is typically out of date with respect to a dynamically changing collection of objects, the content-index search system invokes search result correction routines to remove from the stored search result references that were incorrectly included and to add to the stored search result references that were incorrectly excluded. References that were incorrectly included include those that refer to objects that no longer exist and those that refer to objects that have been modified since the content-index was last updated and that no longer match the search criteria. References that were incorrectly excluded include those that refer to new objects that were not indexed and match the search criteria and those that refer to objects that have been modified since the content-index was last updated and that now match the search criteria.