An information retrieval and visualization system utilizes multiple search engines for retrieving documents from a document database based upon user input queries. Search engines include an n-gram search engine and a vector space model search engine using a neural network training algorithm. Each search engine produces a common mathematical representation of each retrieved document. The retrieved documents are then combined and ranked. Mathematical representations for each respective document is mapped onto a display. Information displayed includes a three-dimensional display of keywords from the user input query. The three-dimensional visualization capability based upon the mathematical representation of information within the information retrieval and visualization system provides users with an intuitive understanding, with relevance feedback/query refinement techniques that can be better utilized, resulting in higher retrieval accuracy (precision).