Method and system for ranking results and providing lists of experts from social networks

A social search server for obtaining ranked search results including names of ranked experts who are members of a social network and presenting the ranked search results to a user performing a search from a user interface of a user device, the user being registered on the social network and having connections thereon, the social search server comprising:

• an input for receiving a search query relative to a subject along with a user identifier;
• an indexing engine for collecting searchable data representative of different activities of the members of the social network, the social search server being connected to a server hosting the social network via a communication network, wherein the data being collected represent different combinations of:
• posting, liking, commenting on, providing links, living in a given location, sharing content, providing articles, and providing videos, the indexing engine being adapted to index the data representative of the different activities of the members on the social network to produce indexed activity data;
• a searching engine using the search query and the user identifier, ranking the members from only the user's connections based on their activities on the social network related to the subject to obtain the names of ranked experts for the subject, the search engine being adapted to assign a weight to each different activity whereby the ranking of the members will be influenced by the different activities performed and the ranking assigned to each different activity;
• and
• an output for returning, to the user device, the names of ranked experts for the subject to the user device for presentation on the user interface.

A method implemented on a social search server for obtaining ranked search results including names of ranked experts who are members of a social network and presenting the ranked search results to a user performing a search from a user interface of a user device, the user being registered on the social network and having connections thereon, the method comprising:

• collecting, by a social search server, searchable data representative of different activities of the members of the social network, the social search server being connected to a server hosting the social network via a communication network, wherein the data being collected represent different combinations of:
• posting, liking, commenting on, providing links, living in a given location, sharing content, providing articles, and providing videos;
• indexing, by an indexing engine, the data representative of the different activities of the members on the social network to produce indexed activity data;
• receiving a search query relative to a subject along with a user identifier from the user device;
• using the search query and the user identifier, ranking members from only the user's connections based on their activities on the social network related to the subject to obtain the names of ranked experts for the subject, the search engine being adapted to assign a weight to each different activity whereby the ranking of the members will be influenced by the different activities performed and the ranking assigned to each different activity;
• and
• returning the names of ranked experts for the subject to the user device for presentation on the user interface.