8. A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing instructions which, when executed by a processor, perform a method, the method comprising: receiving search results identifying a plurality of documents resulting from a search, the plurality of documents containing one or more terms; generating a first matrix containing a term column representing the one or more terms and a document column representing the documents, wherein at least one row of the first matrix correlates one of the plurality of documents with one of the terms; selecting the document column of the first matrix or the term column of the first matrix as a sort preference; sorting the first matrix according to the sort preference; generating a second matrix containing values representing a measure of overlap between the plurality of documents and the terms, based on the sorted first matrix; and calculating cumulative confidence scores according to the values of the second matrix and ranking the search results according to the cumulative confidence scores; wherein the calculated cumulative confidence scores are determined by normalizing the second matrix with a third matrix, the third matrix having a plurality of element positions; and wherein, for each of the plurality of element positions, an element position has a value equaling the total number of unique words found in one or more of the plurality of documents corresponding to the element position.
8. A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing instructions which, when executed by a processor, perform a method, the method comprising: receiving search results identifying a plurality of documents resulting from a search, the plurality of documents containing one or more terms; generating a first matrix containing a term column representing the one or more terms and a document column representing the documents, wherein at least one row of the first matrix correlates one of the plurality of documents with one of the terms; selecting the document column of the first matrix or the term column of the first matrix as a sort preference; sorting the first matrix according to the sort preference; generating a second matrix containing values representing a measure of overlap between the plurality of documents and the terms, based on the sorted first matrix; and calculating cumulative confidence scores according to the values of the second matrix and ranking the search results according to the cumulative confidence scores; wherein the calculated cumulative confidence scores are determined by normalizing the second matrix with a third matrix, the third matrix having a plurality of element positions; and wherein, for each of the plurality of element positions, an element position has a value equaling the total number of unique words found in one or more of the plurality of documents corresponding to the element position. 13. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 8 , wherein the first matrix is sorted according to the document column, and then sorted according to the term column, such that terms common to one of the plurality of documents are in immediate succession of one another in the sorted first matrix.