1. At a computer system, a method for generating a list of candidate tables for inclusion in a search query response, the method comprising: accessing one or more query tokens of a table search query; compiling a list of one or more tables that have any token hit by, for each query token in the one or more query tokens, referring to a table keyword index to identify any tables including the query token; computing a ranking score for each table in the list of one or more tables; and formulating the list of candidate tables by filtering out any tables from the list of one or more tables having an insufficient ranking score.