Ephemeral Document Clustering for Web Applications

Abstract

We revisit document clustering in the context of the Web. Specifically, we investigate on-line ephemeral clustering, whereby the input document set is generated dynamically, typically by search results, and the output clustering hierarchy has a short life span, and is used for interactivebrowsing purposes. Ephemeral clustering for interactive use introduces several new challenges. It requires an efficient algorithm, since clustering is performed on-line. It also requires high precision, because users who are not domain experts are less tolerant to errors, and because the resulting hierarchyisfully automatically generated, as opposed to off-line clustering in which the hierarchy is often manually modified. Finally,interactive clustering requires a presentation layer that enables users to effectively browse the hierarchy, including visualization techniques and automatic annotations of the hierarchy. We present new