Patent ID: 7587391

Claim:
A method executed by a computer system for producing a preference ranking for a set of items based on preferences expressed by users, the method comprising: receiving the set of items at the computer system, wherein each item in the set is a search result; receiving preferences at the computer system from users between pairs of items in the set of items, wherein collecting the preferences from the users involves: selecting pairs of items from the set of items; presenting each of the pairs of items to users for comparison between items in a pair for the selected pairs; and collecting indications of preference from the users between items in the presented pairs; using the received preferences at the computer system to compute an adjacency matrix for the set of items, wherein each element in the adjacency matrix represents preferences between a corresponding pair of items associated with the element; using the adjacency matrix at the computer system to compute the preference ranking for the set of items; assigning the preference ranking at computer system for the set of items; and providing the ranked results to a user.