Patent ID: 7836009

Claim:
A method of ranking, the method including: receiving search engine usage information from a behavior watching module operating on a user's computer, the behavior watching module configured to monitor a user's interaction with a search engine provided by a web server to generate the search engine usage information, the search engine usage information comprising a user search word submitted by a user of the computer to the search engine, a plurality of links selected by the user from results returned by the search engine, and at least one of dwell time or documents viewed by the user when following the selected plurality of links; ranking the plurality of links based on a correspondence to a keyword, the correspondence being based on both (user access rates) and at least one of ((the dwell time) or (the documents viewed)); and storing the plurality of ranks in machine readable memory, the ranks being available in response to a search invoked with the keyword, wherein the ranking step further comprises filtering outlying observations within the search engine usage information before ranking the links, the filtering comprising eliminating links selected by the particular user that were returned by the search engine less than a predetermined number of times.