A unique ranking system and method that facilitates improving the ranking and ordering of objects to further enhance the quality, accuracy, and delivery of search results in response to a search query. The system and method involve monitoring and tracking an object in terms of the number of times it's been accessed and optionally by whom, when, for how long, and an access rate. The user's interaction with the object can be tracked as well. By tracking the objects, a popularity measure can be determined. Popularity based rankings can be computed based on the popularity measure or some function thereof. The popularity measure can be affected by the access time, who accessed it, access duration or the user's interaction with the object upon access. The popularity based rankings can be utilized by a search component to improve the quality and retrieval of search results.