Patent ID: 8065619

Claim:
A method comprising performing a machine-executed operation involving instructions, wherein said instructions are instructions which, when executed by one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform certain steps comprising: assembling user event data from a plurality of content segments on a portal; wherein the user event data encodes components of user interaction with first content items within each of the plurality of content segments on the portal; wherein the encoding of the components of user interaction includes, at least in part, encoding a position of a particular content item of the first content items within the particular content item's corresponding segment on the portal; for each of a plurality of user segments, generating one or more ranking functions based on the user event data and based on said position of said particular content item within said portal; selecting a ranking function from the one or more ranking functions based on a first user segment of the plurality of user segments; for each of a plurality of second content items for which there is no user event data for any user, extracting a set of features for each second content item; with the selected ranking function, generating a rank for the second content items based on the set of features for each second content item; providing, based on the rank, at least one of the second content items.