A system architecture for intelligent browsing on the Web

Compared with traditional business operations, WWW-based commerce has many advantages, such as timeliness, worldwide communication, hyperlinks, and multimedia. However, there are also several browsing problems, such as getting lost, consuming a great amount of time browsing, and lack of customized interactive features. To acquire a competitive advantage over the countless number of Web sites, it is critical to solve these browsing problems. The purpose of this paper is to systematically review all browsing problems and then propose a system architecture for intelligent browsing on the Web. In this architecture, we present five kinds of browsing agents: recommendation agent, new-contents agent, search agent, customized agent, and personal-status agent. In order to support these agents, a user analyzer is provided to maintain the user profile by analyzing log files and CGI parameters. A site monitor is provided to maintain the site database by monitoring all changes to the site. We also developed a prototype to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed system architecture. Finally, due to the time limitations, a laboratory experiment was carried out to verify the only value of the customized agent. The value of the agent was confirmed. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.