1. A computer readable storage medium having stored thereon computer-executable instructions for ranking a plurality of documents in a network, wherein said computer-executable instructions when executed by the computer perform a method of generating search results in response to a search query, the method comprising: storing document information in memory, the document information identifying the plurality of documents in the network, the plurality of documents including authoritative documents and non-authoritative documents, the authoritative documents including at least a first authoritative document and a second authoritative document, and the non-authoritative documents including at least a first non-authoritative document; storing link information in the memory, the link information identifying links among the plurality of documents; computing click distance values for each of the non-authoritative documents to the authoritative documents, the click distance values including at least a first click distance value that is a function of a number of links that need to be followed to create a path from the first non-authoritative document to the first authoritative document and a second click distance value that is a function of a number of links that need to be followed to create a path from the first non-authoritative document to the second authoritative document; computing biased click distance values for each of the non-authoritative documents in the network to the authoritative documents, wherein the biased click distance values include at least a first biased click distance value that is a function of a lesser of the first and second click distances; receiving the search query including at least one search term; executing the search query to generate a list of the plurality of documents that include the at least one search term, the list of the plurality of documents including an identifier of the first non-authoritative document; ranking the list of the plurality of documents that include the at least one search term using a ranking function that comprises one or more query-independent components, wherein at least one query-independent component includes a biased click distance parameter that takes into account the biased click distance values, including the first biased click distance value; and outputting the ranked search results according to the ranking.