A method and system for determining relevance rankings for pages identified in a search query is provided. In response to the search query, an information retrieval system identifies candidate pages/documents from a network that potentially match the search query. A relevance ranking system determines a relevance value for each of candidate pages so that the most relevant pages are displayed to a user. The relevance value is based on a combination of content-based relevance values of the pages and link values determined from a link structure of the pages. A link value is a function of a probability that a user will follow the link as compared to following all other links. With the present invention, improved relevance rankings are obtained for a candidate set of pages.