1. A method, in a data processing system comprising a processor and a memory configured to implement a question and answer (QA) system, for weighting search criteria based on similarities to an ingested corpus in the QA system, the method comprising: parsing a received input question having a set of question characteristics; comparing the set of question characteristics found in the received input question to a set of data characteristics respectively describing data in each corpus of a corpora; for each question characteristic in the set of found question characteristics: responsive to the question characteristic being more related to a data characteristic in the set of data characteristics, assigning a first weight to the corpus within which data associated with the data characteristic resides; and responsive to the question characteristic being less related to the data characteristic in the set of data characteristics, assigning a second weight to the corpus within which the data associated with the data characteristic resides, wherein the first weight is greater than the second weight; and selectively searching for an answer to the received input question in one or more corpora with a higher weighting preferentially to one or more corpora with a lower weighting.