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A path-based approach for web page retrieval

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Abstract

Use of links to enhance page ranking has been widely studied. The underlying assumption is that links convey recommendations. Although this technique has been used successfully in global web search, it produces poor results for website search, because the majority of the links in a website are used to organize information and convey no recommendations. By distinguishing these two kinds of links, respectively for recommendation and information organization, this paper describes a path-based method for web page ranking. We define the Hierarchical Navigation Path (HNP) as a new resource for improving web search. HNP is composed of multi-step navigation information in visitors’ website browsing. It provides indications of the content of the destination page. We first classify the links inside a website. Then, the links for web page organization are exploited to construct the HNPs for each page. Finally, the PathRank algorithm is described for web page retrieval. The experiments show that our approach results in significant improvements over existing solutions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. NEC Labs China, 11/F, Bldg.A, Innovation Plaza, Tsinghua Science Park, Beijing, 100084, China

    Jian-Qiang Li & Yu Zhao

  2. Department of Computer Science, Stanford University, Gates Hall 4A, Room 434, Stanford, CA, 94305-9040, USA

    Hector Garcia-Molina

Authors
  1. Jian-Qiang Li
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  2. Yu Zhao
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  3. Hector Garcia-Molina
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jian-Qiang Li.

Additional information

A preliminary version of this paper appeared in [31]. This submission includes more complete and formal description of the algorithms and experiments.

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Li, JQ., Zhao, Y. & Garcia-Molina, H. A path-based approach for web page retrieval. World Wide Web 15, 257–283 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11280-011-0133-5

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