System for User Driven Ranking of Web Pages

Abstract

Linked documents are ranked by observing link selections for referred documents from referring documents and counting such selections. The counts for each of the link selections are stored at various computer systems of a distributed network, a centralized collection of computers connected through a local network, or a hybrid system (collectively, the “system”) consisting of combinations of distributed and centralized systems, and processed (e.g., using a discrete probability distribution defined by the counts of the link selections) to obtain page ranks for the referred documents. The link selections may be observed by a browser extension running on individual ones of the computer systems of the distributed network and the counts of the link selections may be stored at locations within the system determined by a distributed hash table. Search request results may be displayed in a ranked order as determined by the page ranks.

1 . A computer-implemented method of ranking a plurality of linked documents, comprising:
 observing, at computer-based platforms of a system, link selections for referred documents from referring documents; and   processing, at various ones of the computer-based platforms of the system, counts of the link selections to obtain page ranks (PR) for the referred documents,   wherein said processing is performed according to a model in which not all link selections for referred documents are weighted equally.   
     
     
         2 . The method of  claim 1 , further comprising displaying search request results in a ranked order as determined by the page ranks.