Patent ID: 7747614

Claim:
A method for influencing a result of a search algorithm in generating a result set, the method comprising: receiving a primary result set and a secondary result set in response to a search query, the primary result set and secondary result set each comprising one or more items, wherein the items are related to one or more of: audio content, video content, text content and image content; determining a difference between the one or more items in the primary result set and the one or more items in the secondary result set for storage as a difference result set, including determining the difference according to URL matching, the difference result set: (1) containing the one or more items in the secondary result set that is not included in the primary result set; (2) containing the one or more items in the primary result set that is included in the secondary result set; and (3) excluding one or more items in the primary result set not included in the secondary result set; selecting an item in the difference result set; storing an indication of the selected item for use in influencing items contained in a result set; presenting a search result to a user; eliciting feedback from the user regarding the selection of the item in the difference result set; and merging a rank of the selected item corresponding to the difference result set into the primary result set based on the elicited feedback from the user.