Patent ID: 7853589

Claim:
A method of processing web pages implemented by a computer with a processor, comprising: receiving with the processor a search query including at least one term; generating a query-dependent feature vector of features from the search query; comparing with a search engine implemented by the processor the query-dependent feature vector to information corresponding to a plurality of web pages to obtain a query-dependent ranking feature vector of query-dependent ranking features indicative of the comparison; identifying, with a ranking module, a ranked list of web pages relevant to the search query based on the ranking feature vector obtained from the comparison of the query-dependent feature vector to information corresponding to the plurality of web pages; after identifying the ranked list of web pages, providing the query-dependent feature vector and the ranking feature vector to a classifier and classifying, with the classifier that is separate from the search engine and the ranking module, web spam pages from the ranked list of web pages as a function of the query-dependent feature vector and the ranking feature vector, wherein web pages from ranked list of web pages are classified as web spam pages by detecting distribution patterns of some of the same query-dependent ranking features previously used to identify the web pages in the ranked list as relevant to the search query; updating the ranked list of web pages based on the identified web spam pages and the plurality of web pages as a function of the search query; and providing the ranked list of web pages to a user.