3
Links
These are patents relating to links and link analysis... (not to be confused with PageRank)
14
Google personalized Search
If you're looking to dig into personalization methods from the folks at Google - this is a great place to start.
4
Web Spam
These patents relate to Web Spam identification and systems
11
Query Analysis
These are patents relating to query analysis, revisions and suggestions/ recommendation engines.
1
Page segmentation
Page segmentation is an important area of interest and these patents hold great interest.
1
Snippets
These deal with how search engines show the descriptions relating to a SERP listing.
5
Geo-Targeting
These patents relate to search engines geo-targeting. Handy for those researching local SEO strategies.
1
Explicit user feedback
Explicit user feedback is when the user actively indicates to a search engine, their preferences.
1
Semantics
These patents are on various flavors of semantic analysis.
2
Book Search
These patents relate to vertical book search such as Google Books
3
Other ranking methods
These ranking methods didn't readily fit into other sections but are still of interest.