7. The method of claim 1 , wherein said determining the second peer computer to query for the topic, comprises, identifying a user name in a contact list of an instant messaging program operating on the first peer computer, wherein the second peer computer corresponds to the user name.
1. A method for locating information on a topic within a peer-to-peer network, the method comprising: receiving, on a first peer computer within the peer-to-peer network, a request to locate a topic; determining a second peer computer within the peer-to-peer network to query for the topic; querying an index of the second peer computer for the topic; responsive to determining the topic exists in the index of the second peer computer, receiving identification information of participants of an instant messaging conversation corresponding to the topic; determining the received identification information originated from a currently unavailable peer computer, wherein the currently unavailable peer computer previously pushed an index with the identification information to the second peer computer; and storing, on the first peer computer, the identification information of the participants and indexing the stored identification information by the topic.