13. The method of claim 1 , further comprising: obtaining real usage data relating to accesses of the plurality of documents; and setting a value for a using the real usage data.
1. A method performed by a computer, the method comprising: selecting, by the computer, a first document from a plurality of documents stored in a database; generating, by the computer, a rank for the first document using: R = α N + ( 1 - α ) ⁢ ( r ⁡ ( B 1 )  B 1  + … + r ⁡ ( B n )  B n  ) , where R refers to the rank for the first document, n refers to a value greater than or equal to one, B 1 , . . . , B n refer to one or more second documents, of the plurality of documents, that include a link that points to the first document, r(B 1 ), . . . , r(B n ) refer to ranks for the one or more second documents, |B 1 |, . . . , |B n | refer to a quantity of links that the one or more second documents include, α refers to a constant that is greater than zero and less than one, and N refers to a total quantity of the plurality of documents; and storing, by the computer, the rank for the first document.