1. A method of execution by a computer to represent an MDS (multidimensional scaling) space as a hierarchical data structure, the MDS space defined by a set of points that correspond to a set of objects, wherein distances between pairs of points in the MDS space represent attribute proximities for the corresponding pairs of objects, the hierarchical data structure searchable to identify objects with similar attributes, the method comprising: creating a root node comprising coordinates in the MDS space for a first subset of the set of points selected based on the distances between pairs of points, the root node further comprising boundary information in the MDS space for local MDS spaces defined by further subsets of the set of points, the MDS space defined by running MDS on the first subset of points; and creating a plurality of leaf nodes, each leaf node comprising coordinates in a local MDS space for the points in one of the further subsets, wherein creating a plurality of leaf nodes comprises iteratively grouping the points remaining after selecting the first subset into the further subsets based on coordinates in the MDS space of the remaining points and running MDS on the further subsets to define the local MDS spaces.