Ranking External Content Using Social Signals on Online Social Networks

One or more computer-readable non-transitory storage media embodying software that is operable when executed to:

• receive, from a client system of a first user of the online social network, a query to search for posts of the online social network;
• search an index to identify one or more posts of the online social network that match the query, each post linking to an external object hosted by a third-party system, wherein the index comprises a counter that records a number of social signals associated with each external object within the online social network;
• score each of the identified posts based at least in part on the counter associated with the external object linked to the post;
• and
• send, to the client system of the first user, a search-results page comprising one or more search results, each search result comprising a reference to an identified post having a score greater than a threshold score.

A system comprising:

• one or more processors;
• and a non-transitory memory coupled to the processors comprising instructions executable by the processors, the processors operable when executing the instructions to:
• receive, from a client system of a first user of the online social network, a query to search for posts of the online social network;
• search an index to identify one or more posts of the online social network that match the query, each post linking to an external object hosted by a third-party system, wherein the index comprises a counter that records a number of social signals associated with each external object within the online social network;
• score each of the identified posts based at least in part on the counter associated with the external object linked to the post;
• and
• send, to the client system of the first user, a search-results page comprising one or more search results, each search result comprising a reference to an identified post having a score greater than a threshold score.