US Patent 7836048 Socially-derived relevance in search engine results

A method and apparatus for ranking results from a search engine query is described. In one embodiment, a search engine generates a list of search results in response to a query for a search term to the search engine. A statistical computation engine determines an average frequency of first selection of each hyperlink with respect to its position in a list of hyperlinks, and determines an average frequency of first selection of each search result from the list of search results. A relevance engine compares the average frequency of first selection of a search result from the list of search results with the average frequency of first selection of a corresponding hyperlink in the respective position in the list of hyperlinks, and adjusts the position of the search result in the list of search results based on the comparison.