Criteria-Specific Authority Ranking

• US 20080270390A1
• Filed: 04/30/2008
• Published: 10/30/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 04/30/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Resource Consortium Limited, LLC
• Original Assignee: Piffany Inc.
• Inventors: Ward, David W., Volkmer Ward, Sabine M.
• Granted Patent: US 8,161,040 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/5
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/24578 using ranking
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques

Abstract

Disclosed is a method of ranking linkable nodes based on intrinsic scores assigned to the nodes.

Claims

1. A method of ranking a plurality of linkable nodes, the method comprising the steps of:

(a) analyzing each node with respect to at least one criterion, and assigning an intrinsic score to each node based on the analysis;

(b) identifying links between the nodes; and

(c) generating a ranking score for each node based on the intrinsic scores of nodes linked therewith.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein step (c) comprises initiating ranking scores for all nodes, and iteratively updating the ranking score of each node based on previous ranking scores and the intrinsic scores of nodes linked therewith.

3. The method of claim 2 wherein ranking scores are updated until a convergence criterion is satisfied.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein step (b) comprises defining each node as linking to itself.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein each link is assigned a weighting factor, and the weighting factors are incorporated into the ranking scores.

6. The method of claim 5 wherein the weighting factor of a link comprises the intrinsic score of at least one of the nodes associated with the link.

7. The method of claim 5 wherein the weighting factor of a link comprises a factor other than the intrinsic scores of the nodes associated with the link.

8. The method of claim 7 wherein the weighting factor comprises a normalization factor.

9. The method of claim 5 wherein a link between a node and itself has a different weighting factor than a link between a node and another node.

10. The method of claim 1 wherein the links are directed.

11. The method of claim 1 wherein the links are undirected.

12. The method of claim 1 wherein the at least one criterion is based on a user input.

13. The method of claim 1 wherein the nodes represent documents.

14. The method of claim 13 wherein a link represents a reference in one document to another document.

15. The method of claim 14 wherein the documents are web sites and the links represent hyperlinks.

16. The method of claim 13 wherein the nodes are weighted based on at least one of the readability of the documents or the presence of unsafe or inappropriate content in the documents.

17. The method of claim 16 wherein node weighting is determined with regard to a user'"'"'s age.

18. The method of claim 13 wherein node weighting criteria are also based on responsiveness of the documents to one or more user-specified topics.

19. A computer-readable medium which stores instructions for ranking a plurality of linkable nodes, the instructions comprising:

(a) analyzing each node with respect to at least one criterion, and assigning an intrinsic score to each node based on the analysis;

(b) identifying links between the nodes; and

(c) generating a ranking score for each node based on the intrinsic scores of nodes linked therewith.