Endeca’s approach to processing search queries in a distributed computing environment is predicated on concerns of correctness, scalability, and flexibility in deployment. Using a master–slave architecture, we are able to support classic search as well as more advanced features. We avoid bottlenecking the master with excessive computation or communication by limiting the information from the slaves in the expected case. Categories and Subject Descriptors H.3.4 [Information Storage and Retrieval]: Systems and Software – distributed systems. General Terms Algorithms, Performance, Design. Keywords Information Retrieval, Search, Distributed Systems.