1. A method comprising performing a machine-executed operation involving instructions, wherein the machine-executed operation is at least one of: A) sending said instructions over transmission media; B) receiving said instructions over transmission media; C) storing said instructions onto a machine-readable storage medium; and D) executing the instructions; wherein said instructions are instructions which, when executed by one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform the steps of: storing bonds that reflect relationships between searchable items; wherein the bonds are not stored as part of the searchable items; wherein the bonds do not reflect storage location relationships between said searchable items; wherein the degree of separation between any two given searchable items is based on the minimum number of bonds that have to be traversed to arrive at one of the two searchable items when starting at the other of the two searchable items; receiving a search request to perform a search; responding to said search request by performing the search relative to a particular searchable item, where performing the search includes at least one of searching only those searchable items that are within a particular degree of separation of the particular searchable item; determining the order in which searchable items are compared against search criteria of said search request based on the degree of separation of the searchable items from the particular searchable item; and ranking the searchable items that match said search based, at least in part, on the degree of separation between the searchable items and the particular searchable item.