I’ve been trying to learn a lot about search engines lately, as I’ve been starting at an internet marketing firm. I found this excellent list of online materials for university courses related to search engines:

http://clair.si.umich.edu:8080/wordpress/?p=11

In particular, these seem especially relevant:

• The Structure of Information Networks – http://www.cs.cornell.edu/Courses/cs685/2002fa/ (a good introduction)
• Search Engine Technology – http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/~radev/SET07.htm (a great course)
• Information Retreival and Web Search – http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~mooney/ir-course/ (less math than the columbia course, and thus somewhat easier follow)
• Networked Life – http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~mkearns/teaching/NetworkedLife/ – (a course on networked societies for humanities students, relavent to social networks and such)