Similarity searching often reduces to finding the k nearest neighbors to a query object. Finding the k nearest neighbors is achieved by applying either a depth- first or a best-first algorithm to the search hierarchy containing the data. These algorithms are generally applicable to any index based on hierarchical clustering. The idea is that the data is partitioned into clusters which are aggregated to form other clusters, with the total aggregation being represented as a tree. These algorithms have traditionally used a lower bound corresponding to the minimum distance at which a nearest neighbor can be found (termed MinDist) to prune the search process by avoiding the processing of some of the clusters as well as individual objects when they can be shown to be farther from the query object q than all of the current k nearest neighbors of q. An alternative pruning technique that uses an upper bound corresponding to the maximum possible distance at which a nearest neighbor is guaranteed to be found (termed MaxNearestDist) is described. The MaxNearestDist upper bound is adapted to enable its use for finding the k nearest neighbors instead of just the nearest neighbor (i.e., k=1) as in its previous uses. Both the depth-first and best-first k-nearest neighbor algorithms are modified to use MaxNearestDist, which is shown to enhance both algorithms by overcoming their shortcomings. In particular, for the depth-first algorithm, the number of clusters in the search hierarchy that must be examined is not increased thereby potentially lowering its execution time, while for the best-first algorithm, the number of clusters in the search hierarchy that must be retained in the priority queue used to control the ordering of processing of the clusters is also not increased, thereby potentially lowering its storage requirements.