Systems and methods create an inverted index for a set of documents utilizing a heap data structure. The documents can be divided into a series of n-grams. The n-grams can be hashed, producing hashed n-gram values. A first hashed n-gram value can be placed into the heap data structure. Operations performed using the heap data structure obtain document identifiers that are associated with documents that include a hashed n-gram value that matches the top n-gram value in the heap.