The present invention addresses this and other problems by providing a web site system that includes functionality for searching a repository of information, such as the World Wide Web, by including a search string at the end of a URL without any special formatting. The search string may consist of a single search term, or a plurality of search terms separated by spaces. For example, a user wishing to search for “San Francisco Hotels” may do by simply accessing the URL www.domain_name/San Francisco Hotels, where domain_name is a domain name associated with the web site system. The system may also support the use of Boolean operators and/or other types of operators within the search strings.
In one embodiment, when the system receives a request for a URL of the form www.domain_name/char_string, where char_string is a character string that may include spaces and non-alphabetic characters, the system initially determines whether the character string includes a prefix that identifies the URL as a non-search-request URL. If no such prefix is present, the character string is used in its entirety as a search string to execute a search, and the results of the search are returned to the user. Otherwise, the URL request is processed as a non-search-request URL by, for example, retrieving a static web page or other object from a subdirectory.
