No, they are not used in that sense as a factor that deciphers ranking. The traditional sense of how pages are ranked is more clearly a secret sauce than ever. Listening to what Gary Illyes and John Mueller have stated on numerous occasions indicates that content and links are factors that heavily influence the entity graph. Co-occurrence is an aspect of how Google forms relationships between different entities. Co-occurrence refers to how frequently two different entities are linked together somehow, such as how often two different names are mentioned in a connected manner. For example, Google may learn about the relationship between a business owner and CEO by how frequently their names are mentioned together. However, this is different from a ranking factor.