Patent ID: 8566331

Claim:
A computer-implemented method comprising: identifying a plurality of image search results that are responsive to a search query; determining that a relevance score for a particular image search result from the plurality of image search results meets a specified relevance score threshold, wherein the relevance score is determined independent of visual similarity between a particular image referenced by the particular image search result and other images that are referenced by the plurality of image search results; determining that image similarity data for the particular image indicates that the particular image meets a threshold level of visual similarity to at least a threshold number of the other images that are referenced by the plurality of image search results; determining that the particular image search result is a co-relevant image search result for the search query, the determination being performed in response to determining that both the relevance score meets the specified relevance score threshold, and the image similarity data for the particular image indicates that the particular image meets the threshold level of visual similarity to at least the threshold number of the other images; and generating an image rank score for the particular image search result based on the relevance score and an amplification factor for image search results that are determined to be co-relevant, wherein the amplification factor is used to increase or decrease the image rank score.