How to Build Your Own Search Ranking Algorithm with Machine Learning

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." – Arthur C. Clarke (1961) This quote couldn't apply better to general search engines and web ranking algorithms. You can ask Bing about mostly anything and you'll get the best 10 results out of billions of webpages within a couple of seconds. If that's not magic, I don't know what is! Sometimes the query is about an obscure hobby. Sometimes it's about a news event that nobody could have predicted yesterday. Sometimes it's even unclear what the query is about!