20. The computer-implemented method of claim 17, further comprising the steps of: receiving a lexical distance, the lexical distance defining a number of document terms; determining a number of times at least one of the query terms is present in a first document within the lexical distance of a reference to the second document, for ranking the documents based thereon.
20. The computer-implemented method of claim 17, further comprising the steps of: receiving a lexical distance, the lexical distance defining a number of document terms; determining a number of times at least one of the query terms is present in a first document within the lexical distance of a reference to the second document, for ranking the documents based thereon. 22. The computer-implemented method of claim 20, wherein the lexical distance is established based on the query terms.