Patent ID: 7873623

Claim:
A computer-implemented method of ranking a plurality of linked documents, comprising: observing, at computer-based platforms of a system, link selections for referred documents from referring documents and counting such selections; storing, at storage locations associated with one or more of the computer-based platforms of the system, counts of the link selections; and processing, at various ones of the computer-based platforms of the system, the counts of the link selections to obtain page ranks (PR) for the referred documents, wherein the system comprises one of: a distributed network, an individual computer system, a centralized network of computer systems communicatively coupled to one another through a local network, or a hybrid system consisting of combinations of any of the foregoing; the storage locations are arranged within the system such that a time to find any one storage location is a logarithmic function of a size of the system; and the page ranks are determined according to a discrete probability distribution defined by PR ⁡ ( pg i ) = 1 - d N + d ⁢ ∑ j ⁢ ⁢ PR ⁡ ( pg j ) ⁢ p ij where pages pg j denote Web pages pointing to page pg i , N is a total number of Web pages, d is a non-zero damping factor, and probability p ij is a probability that a Web surfer will select a link to a page p i on the page p j .