1. A computer system, comprising: a communication network; a client connected to the communication network, the client having an input/output interface to submit a query; a server connected to the communication network, the server having an input/output interface to receive a query from the client; a database of images, wherein the data base is resident in the server; a search module resident in the server, wherein the search module is configured to: search the database utilizing the query to locate a set of images that match the search query; analyze each image included in the set of images to determine whether any images included in the set are near duplicates of one another, wherein the analysis includes a pre-processing of the images included in the set of images, the pre-processing including: gathering statistics for each image in the set of images, wherein the statistics include at least one of an aspect ratio associated with an image and a mean value for each chroma channel in the red-green-blue color space associated with an image; scaling each image in the set of images to a uniform size; and computing a luminance matrix for each scaled image in the set of images, wherein the luminance matrix includes a weighted sum of linear red-green-blue color components of image; determine the number of near duplicate images included in the set of images for each image in the set of images; determine a popularity level of a particular image in the set of images based on the number of near duplicate images for the particular image found in the set of images; rank the images included in the set of images according to their determined popularity level with a higher popularity level placed higher in the search result; and providing the ranked list of images to the client in response to the query.