METHODS AND APPARATUS FOR USING A MODIFIED INDEX TO PROVIDE SEARCH RESULTS IN RESPONSE TO AN AMBIGUOUS SEARCH QUERY

A system allows a user to submit an ambiguous search query and to receive potentially disambiguated search results. In one implementation, a search engine's conventional alphanumeric index is translated into a second index that is ambiguated in the same manner as which the user's input is ambiguated. The user's ambiguous search query is compared to this ambiguated index, and the corresponding documents are provided to the user as search results.