Patent ID: 7930303

Claim:
A method in a computing device for generating an importance score for documents having links between the documents, the method comprising: initializing an initial probability distribution for each document; and for each document, calculating by the computing device a diagonal element of a fundamental matrix based on the initial probability distribution and a probability transition matrix, the fundamental matrix representing for each combination of two documents a summation of a difference between a probability for that combination of documents after a number of transitions based on the probability transition matrix and between the probability of the initial probability distribution for a document of the combination; and setting by the computing device the importance score of the document based on the calculated diagonal element for the document and the initial probability distribution wherein an element of the fundamental matrix is represented by the following: Z ij = δ ij + ∑ t = 1 ∞ ⁢ ( P ij t - π j ) where Z ij represents the element for documents i and j, δ ij is 1 for documents i and j where i is equal to j and 0 otherwise, P ij t , represents the entry of the probability transition matrix after t transitions for documents i and j, and π j represents the initial probability distribution for document j.