Inverted files

• Permit fast search for individual terms

• For each term, you get a list consisting of:

  • document ID
  • frequency of term in doc (optional)
  • position of term in doc (optional)

• These lists can be used to solve Boolean queries:

  • country -> d1, d2
  • manor -> d2
  • country AND manor -> d2

• Also used for statistical ranking algorithms

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