Technologies are described herein for providing a more efficient approach to ranking search results. An illustrative technology reduces an amount of ranking data analyzed at query time. In the technology, a term is selected, at index time, from a master index. The term corresponds to a number of documents greater than a threshold. A set of documents that includes the term is selected based on the master index. A rank is determined for each document in the set of documents that contains the term. Each document in the set of documents that contains the term is assigned to a top document list or a bottom document list based on the rank. Predefined values of at least part of the rank are stored in the top document list for documents in the top document list and are not stored in the bottom document list for documents in the bottom document list.