The research results of classification on the basis of affinity.

摘要

The present invention relates to searching content databases and ranking the search results of the searches based, at least in part, on affinity criteria for a particular user. Notably, a given user will communicate through various means with contacts. The identities of some, if not all, of the contacts with which the user communicates are used to create an affinity list. For each contact in the user's affinity list, a record of the items that have been accessed by that user is maintained as access history information. Each contact may have access history information, and the collection of the access history information for some or all of the contacts in the user's affinity list is generally referred to as affinity criteria. When the user initiates a search for items in contact databases, items returned from the search are ranked based, at least in part, on the affinity criteria.