An efficient manner of performing an M-out-of-N partial matching search of indexed documents (e.g., web pages) is provided herein. More particularly, indexed words are arranged into a global location space (GLS), providing for respective occurrences of words in indexed documents being searched to have continuous locations on a one-dimensional GLS. Documents within the GLS are separated by end of document word marking boundaries between consecutive documents. The query words are then separated into an active set, comprising the left-most query words, and a non-active set. A partial matching operator transverses the GLS, applying active geometric constraints, in a sequential manner, to words in the active set. This causes shifting of the active set along the GLS to comprise M left-most query words. If a document satisfies constraints associated with M words in an active set, the document comprises at least M-out-of-N words.