Need Rating Algorithm

I need some sort of algorithm developed for a project I am currently working on that will basically be an algorithm that gives various “terms” and “names” a number value based on popularity on the web. You can see my website here: [login to view URL]~thefockm/ It’s a fantasy stock market that allows people to buy and sell “Focks”, which is basically Fantasy Stocks, and those stocks prices will rise and fall based on popularity of the site by the general public. Please look at Trendio.com. This website allows people to buy and sell various terms, and the prices for those terms depend on their popularity. I am not exactly sure how the prices are calculated, but I need to figure it out. I believe they use [login to view URL], [login to view URL], and [login to view URL] to determine popularity of certain terms and things, and then track their popularity over time, giving them a “price” based on their popularity. I think it is all done relative to previous prices and the prices rise and fall based on these percentages. I think they also may go by how many times certain terms are mentioned on a variety of different blogs. Look at this website: [login to view URL] you will see that this website they are talking about, the celebrity ranker, uses google searches API to rank celebrities. I would be up for doing someone like this. I would recommend going into the google APIs, which is mentioned earlier in this paragraph, to see if you can figure out a way to tap into the google searches (or the yahoo, or the technorati), and if we can figure out something like this, the prices for ALL the focks can literally be done just through that. Basically, I need some sort of plan to determine the popularity of the various “Focks” in my system. I don’t care how it is done, but I just need a system that functions properly so that the most popular Focks rise in price, and the least popular lower. It just needs to be a perfect system I need a plan and an algorithm to calculate a price for all the various focks in all the various categories on the website. Below are the categories that we need to figure out how to do the pricing. Celebs – based on mentions in popular blogs (from technorati). Maybe we could have a list of like 1,000 blogs, and be plugged into their RSS feeds. Based on how many times they are mentioned, that is how we will determine their percentage rise or fall. OR we can do it based on the popularity based on google’s or yahoo’s API for searches. OR maybe a combination of all of them. Music – [login to view URL];category=allcharts OR the same thing we do with celebs. Sports – teams – based on wins and losses. Players – based on statistics. Websites – Alexa ranking, compete ranking, popularity somehow based on links or blog mentions? Others – Same as celebs. Politics – Same as celebs. Everyone – based on their popularity and their portfolio. This is one that I will be able to do myself. So I really don’t care how the prices are figured out, as long as the most popular focks have the highest prices (or at least rise the highest) while the least popular focks have the lowest prices (or at least rise the least). It just needs to be an algorithm that functions properly. I will welcome anyone to email me with feedback of how you think this can be incorporated, and then I would like to hire someone to figure out a way to do it… Thanks, Brian