1. A computer-implemented method of improving performance of a computer to enhance relevance ranking of results in a computer-implemented search of a corpus of documents, the method comprising: a. operating at the search-controller level to mediate between a request function and an underlying generic text-search system and electronically receiving a query containing a search clause from the request function; b. by a processor, transforming the received search clause into an automatically generated, intentionally redundant set of search clauses representing a nesting of scopes of focus related to a determined topic related to the received search clause, the set of search clauses to be connected by a distribution-biased OR operator and submitted as a single request to an underlying search engine and being executed against a database associated with the search engine; c. applying the set of search clauses, by the search engine, such that the nesting of scopes of focus induce the underlying search engine to return a set of responsive documents representative of the broadest of the set of search clauses and to relevance-score the set of responsive documents based on degree of focus on the determined topic suggested by the received search clause, the relevance-score being directly related to the degree of focus on the determined topic than achieved by merely counting occurrences, in each responsive document, of text satisfying the received search clause.