Check this article out below... it discusses some Google patents that the USPO just posted on March 31st.
It talks about ranking documents by things like:
- a page's value to advertisers
- whether a page appears in a news article online
- if a surfer has the page in their bookmarks (anyone predict a Google webbrowser soon??)
- the cache and cookies a surfer has from a site
- how many years in advance a domain is registered for!!
- how many times a certain site is chosen from a set of search results (it's click-thru rate)
Pretty crazy stuff... not all of it good sounding.
http://www.site-reference.com/Search...714/index.html