Criteria-Specific Authority Ranking

• US 20120173543A1
• Filed: 03/09/2012
• Published: 07/05/2012
• 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 8,983,943 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/748
• 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 interlinked nodes, the method comprising the steps of:

(a) analyzing each node so as to measure a property of the node that is independent of its relation to other nodes;

(b) assigning an intrinsic score to each node based on the analysis; and

(c) using a processor, generating a ranking score for each node based, at least in part, 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, at least in part, on (i) the previous ranking scores and (ii) the intrinsic scores of the nodes linked therewith.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein updating the ranking score of each node comprises computing a weighted average of the previous ranking scores of the nodes linked therewith, the intrinsic scores of said nodes constituting respective weighting factors.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein updating the ranking score of each node further comprises averaging the previous ranking score of said node, weighted by its intrinsic score and an additional weighting factor common to all nodes, with the weighted average of the previous ranking scores of the nodes linked therewith.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the links are directed.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the links are undirected.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein, in step (a), the nodes are analyzed with respect to a user-specified criterion.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein the user-specified criterion comprises the user'"'"'s age.

9. The method of claim 7, wherein the user-specified criterion comprises a topic.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein the nodes represent documents.

11. The method of claim 10, wherein a link represents a reference in one document to another document.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein the documents are web sites and the links represent hyperlinks.

13. The method of claim 10, wherein the intrinsic scores reflect the readability of the documents.

14. A method of ranking a plurality of interlinked documents, the method comprising the steps of:

(a) analyzing the content of each document and assigning an intrinsic score to the document based on the analysis;

(b) using a processor, generating a ranking score for each document by initiating ranking scores for all documents and iteratively updating the ranking score of each document based on previous ranking scores weighted by the respective intrinsic scores of documents linked therewith.

15. The method of claim 14, wherein iteratively updating the ranking scores comprises multiplying a vector of the ranking scores by a matrix that reflects (i) the intrinsic scores of the documents and (ii) links between the documents.

16. A method of ranking a plurality of interlinked nodes that form a network, the method comprising the steps of:

(a) analyzing each node so as to measure a property of the node that is independent of its relation to other nodes, and assigning an intrinsic score to the node based on the analysis;

(b) using a processor, simulating a random walk through the network; and

(c) when passing through a node during the simulated random walk, incrementing a counter for that node by the intrinsic score of the immediately preceding node.

17. The method of claim 16, wherein the random walk comprises a series of steps and wherein simulating the random walk comprises, at each step, randomly selecting a new node from a list of nodes comprising all nodes to which the immediately preceding node links.

18. The method of claim 17, wherein the list of nodes associated with each step further comprises the immediately preceding node.