Endorsements Used in Ranking Ads

A system comprising:

• one or more computers;
• and
• a computer-readable medium coupled to the one or more computers having instructions stored thereon which, when executed by the one or more computers, cause the one or more computers to perform operations comprising:
• receiving a request for an advertisement from a user device associated with a first user;
• identifying advertisements responsive to the request;
• determining that:
• one of the advertisements describes a good or service that is associated with an endorsement provided by an endorser;
• and
• the endorser is recommended by a second user that belongs to a same social network as the first user;
• ranking the advertisements based on one or more signals associated with each advertisement, wherein one of the signals for the one advertisement is the endorsement and is used in the ranking in response to the determination;
• and
• providing the ranked advertisements in response to the request.

A computer storage medium encoded with a computer program, the program comprising instructions that when executed by data processing apparatus cause the data processing apparatus to perform operations comprising:

• receiving a request for an advertisement from a user device associated with a first user;
• identifying advertisements responsive to the request;
• determining that:
• one of the advertisements describes a good or service that is associated with an endorsement provided by an endorser, and
• the endorser is recommended by a second user that belongs to a same social network as the first user;
• ranking the advertisements based on one or more signals associated with each advertisement, wherein one of the signals for the one advertisement is the endorsement and is used in the ranking in response to the determination;
• and
• providing the ranked advertisements in response to the request.