System and method for determining quality of cited objects in search results based on the influence of citing subjects

A system, comprising:

• a citation search engine, which in operation,
• sets and adjusts one or more of citation searching and ranking criteria and mechanisms based on user specification and/or internal statistical data;
• retrieves a plurality of citations composed by a plurality of subjects citing a plurality of objects that fit the searching criteria;
• an influence evaluation engine, which in operation, calculates influence scores of the plurality of subjects that compose the plurality of citations citing the plurality of objects;
• an object selection engine, which in operation,
• calculates influence scores of the plurality of objects in the plurality of citations based on the influence scores of the plurality of subjects and the ranking criteria;
• selects as a search result the plurality of objects based on both matching of the objects with the searching criteria as well as the influence scores of the objects.