Web mining: information and pattern discovery on the World Wide Web

TLDR

Web mining applies data‑mining techniques to the World Wide Web, but the lack of a common vocabulary has led to confusion, with the term used for both content discovery and usage pattern mining. The paper defines Web mining and overviews its research issues, techniques, and development efforts. The authors describe WEBMINER, a system for mining user browsing patterns on the Web. The paper concludes by outlining remaining research issues in Web mining.

Abstract

Application of data mining techniques to the World Wide Web, referred to as Web mining, has been the focus of several recent research projects and papers. However, there is no established vocabulary, leading to confusion when comparing research efforts. The term Web mining has been used in two distinct ways. The first, called Web content mining in this paper, is the process of information discovery from sources across the World Wide Web. The second, called Web usage mining, is the process of mining for user browsing and access patterns. We define Web mining and present an overview of the various research issues, techniques, and development efforts. We briefly describe WEBMINER, a system for Web usage mining, and conclude the paper by listing research issues.