Using votes for ranking search results

I would like to give pages that users have rated as useful a higher relevance in search results and similarly less usefull pages a lower search rating. I see in the comments in search.module this should be possible in a modular way by implementing nodeapi('update index') and nodeapi('search result') but I wouldn't be able to program this myself. I would consider this a very useful addition to votingapi as it would generically add this function to all voting mechanisms (I'm using nodevote). It would provide a way for my site to build up a knowledge base by stimulating reuse of pages marked by the group as useful. It would also give more meaning to voting on pages.

Thanks for considering my suggestion
Johan