Patent ID: 7624104

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for generating an authority value of a first one of a plurality of documents, comprising: generating a first component of the authority value by assigning a weight to each of a plurality of to outbound links associated with the first document, the outbound links enabling access to a first subset of the plurality of documents; generating a second component of the authority value by generating a teleportation distribution which includes a term for each document in a second subset of the plurality of documents, each of the second subset of documents representing a potential user session staffing point; generating a third component of the authority value comprising a likelihood that a user session initiated by any of a population of users will end with the first document, the user session comprising a document sequence defined by navigation via links embedded in successive documents in the document sequence; and combining the first, second, and third components of the authority value to generate the authority value; wherein one or more of the weights assigned to the plurality of outbound links, the terms included in the teleportation distribution, or the likelihood that a user session will end with the first document is computed with reference to user data relating to at least some of the outbound links and the second subset of documents, wherein at least some of the user data comprises session data representing navigation among the plurality of documents by the population of users.