INFORMATION RETRIEVAL

A meta search engine receives a query from a user, and submits adapted queries to n search engines. The results are adapted and combined to provide a result set R'. In parallel, the meta search engine accesses a selected hit matrix populated with values for correspondence of queries q1-qm with web pages pi-pn. These values are the number of "hits" for pervious searches. The pages retrieved from a row for qT are combined with the search engine results to provide a final result but which is ranked according to previous search experience. The hit matrix may be dynamically selected according to a user community. The query need not exactly match a hit matrix query as rows can be selected according to similarity to the current query qT with weightings applied.