Patent ID: 8661031

Claim:
A method, comprising: a search engine receiving a user-specified search query, said search query specifying one or more search terms; the search engine processing the search query by identifying a set of documents that satisfy the search query; the search engine providing the set of documents that satisfy the search query, ordered, at least in part, according to a document relevance score that is based on an analysis of past user-generated highlights, wherein a user-generated highlight comprises a visual modification of a user selected portion of a web-enabled document by a highlighting application, wherein the user manually controls the highlighting application to visually indicate the user selected portion, and wherein information about the past user-generated highlights has been stored in a repository, and wherein the document relevance score of a document is determined by a plurality of weighted factors comprising: a number of past highlights made on the document, a number of users that made highlights on the document, a number of comments made on the document, a number of times the document has been shared, a number of times the document has been viewed, a past rating of the document, a content of the document, a content of a past highlight, a content of a specific sections of the document, a relevance of the users that contributed an activity associated with the document, a set of ratings of contributing users, a point in time when the activities were performed, and a source of the document.