1. A computer-implemented method for identifying nodes that are beneficiaries of node importance inflating links in a directed graph of linked nodes, wherein the directed graph of linked nodes corresponds to a linked database, and wherein the nodes correspond to documents within the linked database, the method comprising: computing, for each of at least a subset of the nodes in the directed graph, a respective quantity corresponding to a derivative of a node importance function; for each node in the subset, comparing the respective computed quantity with a threshold; and identifying at least a portion of the subset for which the comparison produces a predefined result.