1. A computer-implemented method of determining relevant search items, the method comprising the steps performed by a computer of: 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.
1. A computer-implemented method of determining relevant search items, the method comprising the steps performed by a computer of: 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. 3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the first matrix is sorted according to the term column, and then sorted according to the document column, such that documents sharing a common term are in immediate succession of one another in the sorted first matrix.