Text categorization based on k-nearest neighbor approach for Web site classification

Automatic categorization is a viable method to deal with the scaling problem on the World Wide Web. For Web site classification, this paper proposes the use of Web pages linked with the home page in a different manner from the sole use of home pages in previous research. To implement our proposed method, we derive a scheme for Web site classification based on the k-nearest neighbor (k-NN) approach: It consists of three phases: Web page selection (connectivity analysis), Web page classification, and Web site classification. Given a Web site, the Web page selection chooses several representative Web pages using connectivity analysis. The k-NN classifier next classifies each of the selected Web pages. Finally, the classified Web pages are extended to a classification of the entire Web site. To improve performance, we supplement the k-NN approach with a feature selection method and a term weighting scheme using markup tags, and also reform its document-document similarity measure. In our experiments on a Korean commercial Web directory, the proposed system, using both a home page and its linked pages, improved the performance of micro-averaging breakeven point by 30.02%, compared with an ordinary classification which uses a home page only. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.