1. A method for searching content stored on a local computing device of a user, the method comprising: publishing at least some of the content as one or more subsets of private application data, personal to the user, to a corresponding one or more respective application public storage areas, each of the one or more subsets of private application data corresponding to a respective application having at least a portion installed locally on the local computing device, each of the one or more subsets of private application data being stored in a respective private application storage area that is not accessible outside the respective application, the published one or more subsets of private application data being stored on and publically available for access on the local computing device; publishing a relative link to one or more given items of at least one of the one or more subsets in the private application data; notifying a search engine of the publication of the one or more subsets of private application data and the relative link to the one or more given items; and in response to the notification, crawling the one or more application public storage areas, and generating and storing on the local computing device by a local search engine executing on the local computing device, a search index of data, including the published one or more subsets of private application data and the relative link to the one or more given items.