9. A method, comprising: receiving on a computing device resource items generated by a search engine in response to a search request; obtaining resource items from an information source; parsing a metadata source in each of the resource items for one or more metadata items, and parsing a content portion of each of the resource items into one or more text selections and associated formatting information applied to the one or more text selections; passing the one or more metadata items and the one or more text selections and associated formatting information for each of the resource items through a feature extraction application; extracting titles from the one or more text selections and associated formatting information for each of the resources including using formatting characteristics to determine when to extract a title from the resource item; wherein the formatting characteristics that are used include: a bold formatting characteristic; an underlining formatting characteristic; wherein the feature extraction application stores statistical information for each extracted title that provides a number of and a frequency of appearance of the extracted title; determining applicability of the one or more metadata items by comparing the one or more metadata items against known metadata for use in ranking search results; comparing words parsed from the text that is separate from the one or more metadata items against a database of known words that have been previously characterized; processing the extracted titles, the one or more metadata items, the one or more text selections and the associated formatting information according to a ranking algorithm for generating a ranking value for each of the resource items based on a relevance of each of the resource items to the search request received by the search engine; and generating a list of the resource items in an order according to the ranking value for each of the resource items.
9. A method, comprising: receiving on a computing device resource items generated by a search engine in response to a search request; obtaining resource items from an information source; parsing a metadata source in each of the resource items for one or more metadata items, and parsing a content portion of each of the resource items into one or more text selections and associated formatting information applied to the one or more text selections; passing the one or more metadata items and the one or more text selections and associated formatting information for each of the resource items through a feature extraction application; extracting titles from the one or more text selections and associated formatting information for each of the resources including using formatting characteristics to determine when to extract a title from the resource item; wherein the formatting characteristics that are used include: a bold formatting characteristic; an underlining formatting characteristic; wherein the feature extraction application stores statistical information for each extracted title that provides a number of and a frequency of appearance of the extracted title; determining applicability of the one or more metadata items by comparing the one or more metadata items against known metadata for use in ranking search results; comparing words parsed from the text that is separate from the one or more metadata items against a database of known words that have been previously characterized; processing the extracted titles, the one or more metadata items, the one or more text selections and the associated formatting information according to a ranking algorithm for generating a ranking value for each of the resource items based on a relevance of each of the resource items to the search request received by the search engine; and generating a list of the resource items in an order according to the ranking value for each of the resource items. 12. The method of claim 9 , prior to processing the extracted titles, the one or more metadata items, the one or more text selections and the associated formatting information according to the ranking algorithm for generating the ranking value for each of the resource items based on the relevance of each of the resource items to the search request received by the search engine, receiving the search request at the search engine.