The present invention comprises an apparatus for, computers software for, and method of providing personalized search capabilities of hypertext transmission protocol pages comprising: providing an index server maintaining an index to hypertext transmission protocol pages and employing a hierarchical plurality of topic categories; permitting a user to specify any subset of the plurality of topic categories; and adding to a hypertext transmission protocol page controlled by the user link information permitting execution of searches of the index server in any category of the subset but only of categories in the subset.