A technique for determining the relative relevance of electronic documents
based on metadata/content associated with the document as a whole and/or
metadata/content associated with one or more subdivisions of the
electronic document. Metadata is associated with the document and various
subdivision markers in the code of the document. A comparison of
electronic documents may be made by comparing the metadata/content
associated with the document and/or the subdivisions of the document to
determine which documents contains subject matter that is relevant to the
subject matter of another document or search criteria. The
metadata/content may be weighted and these weights may be modified based
on a rank profile. A relevance score may be determined based on the
comparison of the metadata/content for the documents and/or subdivisions
of the documents as well as the weights attributed to the various
subdivisions and documents.