Method for assigning relative quality scores to a collection of linked documents

A computer-implemented method for assigning scores to a plurality of groups of linked documents, at least some of the documents being hypermedia documents, comprising:

• constructing a spring network according to a connectivity graph of a collection of groups of documents and links among the documents;
• identifying a plurality of nodes as reference nodes and others as regular nodes;
• applying a predetermined amount of displacements on the reference nodes;
• computing the displacements of regular nodes in the spring network;
• and
• assigning scores to groups of documents based on the displacements of the nodes that correspond to the documents.

A computer-implemented method for assigning scores to a plurality of linked documents, at least some of the documents being hypermedia documents, comprising:

• constructing a spring network according to the connectivity graph of a collection of documents and links among the documents;
• identifying a plurality of nodes as a first set of reference nodes and others as a first set of regular nodes;
• applying a predetermined amount of displacements on the first set of reference nodes;
• computing the displacements of the first set of regular nodes in the spring network;
• and
• identifying a plurality of nodes as a second set of reference nodes that may differ from the first set and other nodes as a second set of regular nodes;
• applying a predetermined amount of displacements on the second set of reference nodes;
• computing the displacements of the second set of regular nodes in the spring network;
• and
• assigning scores to documents based on the second set of displacements of the nodes that correspond to the documents.