System and method for quickly selecting content items (e.g., documents) having highest ranking scores in response to a query for content items. Base scores for a plurality of content items are determined based on attributes of the content items. One or more attributes are extracted from the query, the base scores of at least some of the content items are adjusted based on relationships between the query attributes and the content item attributes. A subset of the plurality of content items having the highest adjusted scores are selected, and the selected subset of content items are output.