SYSTEM AND METHODS FOR RANKING DOCUMENTS BASED ON CONTENT CHARACTERISTICS

A system is described for assessing information in natural language contents. A user interface receives an object name as a query term and a value for a customized ranking parameter from a user. A computer storage device stores an object-specific data set related to the object name, wherein the object-specific data set includes a plurality of property names and association-strength values. A computer processing system can count a first frequency of a first property name and count a second frequency of a second property name in a document containing text in a natural language, calculate a relevance score as a function of the first frequency and the second frequency, and rank the plurality of documents using their respective relevance scores, and return one or more documents to the user based on the ranking of the plurality of documents. The function is in part defined by the customized ranking parameter.