Posting lists

Posting lists are tools used in search engines to quickly find documents containing specific words. When a word is indexed, the search engine creates a list that records all the places (such as document IDs or positions) where that word appears. These lists allow the engine to easily retrieve relevant documents by intersecting lists for multiple words, making searches faster and more efficient. Think of posting lists as an organized directory: they tell you where to find each word across a large collection of texts, streamlining the process of locating information.