The U.S. Patent Office awarded Facebook a patent for “a click-behavior based search engine application” earlier today, GoRumors reports.

The patent, first filed back in 2004, determines search result ranking by looking at “the frequency of clicks on the search results by members of social network who are within a predetermined degree of separation from the member who submitted the query.”

We aren’t aware of Facebook actually using that sort of technology, and, of course, it has since outsourced search to Microsoft. But Google has been experimenting with “social search” for a while now. The experiment isn’t worth much right now, since Google doesn’t have good data on its users’ social connections, but if Google is able to change that with Me, Facebook might try to use this patent as a weapon.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Google Takes Aim At Facebook And Twitter: Social Search Is Now Live
• Google Looking To Buy Social Search Startup Aardvark For $30+ Million
• Google’s Marissa Mayer Shows Off ‘Social Search’