Semantic Portal is the next generation of web portals that are powered by Semantic Web technologies for improved information sharing and exchange for a community of users. Current methods of searching in Semantic Portals are limited to keyword-based search using information retrieval (IR) techniques, ontology-based formal query and reasoning, or a simple combination of the two. In this paper, we propose an enhanced model that tightly integrates IR with formal query and reasoning to fully utilize both textual and semantic information for searching in Semantic Portals. The model extends the search capabilities of existing methods and can answer more complex search requests. The ideas in a fuzzy description logic (DL) IR model and a formal DL query method are employed and combined in our model. Based on the model, a semantic search service is implemented and evaluated. The evaluation shows very large improvements over existing methods. Categories and Subject Descriptors H.3.3 [Informatio...