Patent ID: 8706720

Claim:
A method of determining the relevance of a web node comprising: assigning one or more source score values to one or more seed nodes included in a seed set; deriving a destination score value for the web node based on a mapping of a reachability relationship between one or more seed nodes and the web node, wherein the reachability relationship is associated with a random surfer model; deriving a source score value for the web node based on a mapping of a reachability relationship between the web node and one or more evaluation nodes and based on a derived destination score associated, respectively, with each of the one or more evaluation nodes; and mitigating a topic diffusion comprising at least one of a topic drift and a topic generalization, wherein a topic drift occurs when the seed set is contaminated by nodes that are not relevant to a topic associated with the seed set, and wherein a topic generalization occurs when a set of evaluation nodes is recursively enlarged; wherein the web node, the seed nodes, and the one or more evaluation nodes are documents included in a document collection.