Mining the Web

Preface

This book is about finding significant statistical patterns relating hypertext documents, topics, hyperlinks, and queries and using these patterns to connect users to information they seek. The Web has become a vast storehouse of knowledge, built in a decentralized yet collaborative manner. It is a living, growing, populist, and participatory medium of expression with no central editorship. This has positive and negative implications. On the positive side, there is widespread participation in authoring content. Compared to print or broadcast media, the ratio of content creators to the audience is more equitable. On the negative side, the heterogeneity and lack of structure makes it hard to frame queries and satisfy information needs. ...