A method and corresponding system for providing a skip group rule feature is disclosed. When a search for a key matches a skip group rule in a group of prioritized rules, the search skips over rules having priorities lower than the skip group rule and the search continues to a next group. A convenient example of a compiler rewrites the lower priority rules by subtracting the skip group rule from them. The subtraction includes subtracting range, exact-match, mask, and prefix fields. The rewritten rules appear to a search processor as typical rules. Beneficially, the search processor requires no additional logic to process a skip group rule, skip over lower priority rules, and go on to search a next group of rules. Advantageously, this approach enables any number of skip group rules to be defined allowing for better classification of network data.