Ranking is the process of positioning individuals, groups or businesses on an ordinal scale in relation to others. A list arranged in this way is said to be in rank order. Ranking is a common technique used in non-parametric statistics.

Some examples:

• In many sports, individuals or teams are given rankings, generally by the sport's governing body
  • In football (soccer), national teams are ranked in the FIFA World Rankings and, unofficially, in the World Football Elo Ratings.
  • In snooker, players are ranked using the Snooker world rankings
  • In ice hockey, national teams are ranked in the IIHF World Ranking
  • In golf, the top male golfers are ranked using the Official World Golf Rankings
• In relation to credit standing, the ranking of a security refers to where that particular security would stand in a wind up of the issuing company. For instance, capital notes are subordinated securities; they would rank behind senior debt in a wind up. In other words the holders of senior debt would be paid out before subordinated debt holders received any funds.
• Search engines rank web pages depending on their relevance to a user's query. See HITS algorithm, PageRank, TrustRank.
• In video gaming, players may be given a ranking. To "rank up" is to achieve a higher ranking relative to other players, especially with strategies that do not depend on the player's skill.
• A bibliogram ranks common noun phrases in a piece of text.

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