Efficiently ranking web pages via matrix index manipulation and improved caching

Abstract

Methods and systems are described for computing page rankings more efficiently. Using an interconnectivity matrix describing the interconnection of web pages, a new matrix is computed. The new matrix is used to compute the average of values associated with each web page's neighboring web pages. The secondary eigenvector of this new matrix is computed, and indices for web pages are relabeled according to the eigenvector. The data structure storing the interconnectivity information is preferably also physically sorted according to the eigenvector. By reorganizing the matrix used in the web page ranking computations, caching is performed more efficiently, resulting in faster page ranking techniques. Methods for efficiently allocating the distribution of resources are also described.

Description

technical field

[0001] The present invention relates generally to the field of Internet search, and in particular to ranking web pages by means of matrix calculations. Background of the invention

[0002] The Internet currently contains hundreds of millions of web pages interconnected by hyperlinks. Internet users typically utilize a web browsing application ("browser") to browse through a web page by selecting and clicking a hyperlink or by manually entering a "uniform resource locator" ("URL") which allows the browser to directly access a particular web page. Navigate between these pages. However, users often wish to search the Internet to find pages containing particular items of information. Due to the size of the Internet, it is impractical for a user to manually browse the Internet to search for relevant pages. Instead, the user typically activates a search engine, which is a computer application developed for searching the Internet. Search engines are typically ho...

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