Systems and methods for ranking documents based upon structurally interrelated information
First Claim
1. In a computing system comprising at least one processor and a memory communicatively coupled to said at least one processor, a method for adjusting a score of a document returned in a list of scored documents responsive to a search engine query, wherein a Web server is assigned a minimum score to be divided among documents hosted on the Web server and said minimum score increases in proportion to a number of structurally linked documents endorsing said document, the method comprising:
- identifying, using said computing system, the Web server hosting said document, said Web server defined by at least one of;
(A) a server comprising a plurality of Web pages with the same symbolic host name, (B) a server comprising a plurality of Web pages associated with the same domain, and (C) a server having a plurality of Web pages associated with the same IP address;
determining, on said computing system, an adjustment factor in inverse proportion to a total number of documents hosted on said Web server;
adjusting said score as a function of said adjustment factor, whereby when said number of documents on said Web server increases said score decreases and when said number of documents on said Web server decreases said score increases; and
storing the adjusted score in said memory.
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Accused Products
Abstract
Systems and methods for ranking Web pages based on hyperlink information in a manner that is resistant to nepotistic links are provided. In one embodiment, a Web search service is provided for returning quality query results. The vulnerability of existing ranking algorithms, such as PageRank, to Web pages that are artificially generated for the sole purpose of inflating the score of target page(s) is addressed. Intuitively, it is recognized that it is less likely to reach a particular page on a Web server having many pages via a random jump than it is to reach a particular page on a Web server having few pages, which implies that the influence of such a page upon another page by linking to, or endorsing, the other page is diminished. Thus, in various non-limiting embodiments, each Web server, not each Web page, is assigned a guaranteed minimum score. This minimum score assigned to a server can then be divided among all the pages on that Web server.
29 Citations
29 Claims
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1. In a computing system comprising at least one processor and a memory communicatively coupled to said at least one processor, a method for adjusting a score of a document returned in a list of scored documents responsive to a search engine query, wherein a Web server is assigned a minimum score to be divided among documents hosted on the Web server and said minimum score increases in proportion to a number of structurally linked documents endorsing said document, the method comprising:
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identifying, using said computing system, the Web server hosting said document, said Web server defined by at least one of;
(A) a server comprising a plurality of Web pages with the same symbolic host name, (B) a server comprising a plurality of Web pages associated with the same domain, and (C) a server having a plurality of Web pages associated with the same IP address;determining, on said computing system, an adjustment factor in inverse proportion to a total number of documents hosted on said Web server; adjusting said score as a function of said adjustment factor, whereby when said number of documents on said Web server increases said score decreases and when said number of documents on said Web server decreases said score increases; and storing the adjusted score in said memory. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15)
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16. In a computing system comprising at least one processor and a memory communicatively coupled to said at least one processor, a method for assigning a score to a document of a plurality of structurally linked documents, the document is hosted on a Web server and the Web server is assigned a minimum score to be divided among documents hosted on the Web server and said document is returned in a list of scored documents responsive to a search engine query, the method comprising:
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locating said document on the Web server defined by at least one of;
(A) a server comprising a plurality of the Web pages with the same symbolic host name, (B) a server comprising a plurality of Web pages associated with the same domain, and (C) a server having a plurality of Web pages associated with the same IP address, wherein said document has at least one backlink from at least one source document of the plurality of structurally linked documents;calculating the score of the document in proportion to at least one score associated with at least one of the at least one source document; calculating the score in inverse proportion to a total number of said at least one source document located on said Web server resulting in said score being divided among said total number of documents, whereby when said number of documents increases said score decreases and when said number of documents decreases said score increases; and storing the score in said memory. - View Dependent Claims (17, 18, 19, 20, 21)
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22. A computer readable medium storing computer executable instructions for assigning a score to a document of a plurality of structurally linked documents, wherein the document is located on a Web server assigned a minimum score to be divided among documents hosted on the Web server and the document is returned in a list of scored documents responsive to a search engine query, the documents having at least one backlink from at least one other document of the plurality of structurally linked documents, the medium comprising:
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instructions for locating said document on the Web server defined by at least one of;
(A) a server comprising a plurality of Web pages with the same symbolic host name, (B) a server comprising a plurality of Web pages associated with the same domain, and (C) a server having a plurality of Web pages associated with the same IP address;instructions for assigning the score to the document in inverse proportion to a total number of documents located on said Web server resulting in said score being assigned to said document by being distributed among said number of documents, including said document, whereby when said number of documents increases said score assigned to said document decreases and when said number of documents decreases said score assigned to said document increases; and instructions for storing the score in a memory. - View Dependent Claims (23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29)
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Specification