Patent ID: 7305390

Claim:
A method in a computing system for ranking items in a search result, the method comprising: receiving one or more search terms for a user; identifying a plurality of items that match at least one of the terms; identifying one or more demographic groups to which the user belongs; tracking selections of the items by users in multiple predefined demographic groups during one or more periods of time including, for each of multiple search queries that are each from a user: identifying one or more of the predefined demographic groups to which the user belongs; providing an indication to the user of a search result that includes items satisfying the query; for each of the included items that the user selects during the one or more periods of time and for each of the identified predefined demographic groups, increasing a rating value corresponding to a combination of the selected item and the predefined demographic group; generating a relevance ranking for each of multiple of the identified items based on a number of selections of that item by users in the identified demographic groups during at least one prior period of time; and providing an indication of the generated relevance rankings for the multiple items.