Integrating Semantic Knowledge with Web Usage Mining for Personalization

Web usage mining has been used effectively as an approach to automatic personalization and as a way to overcome deficiencies of traditional approaches such as collaborative filtering. Despite their success, such systems, as in more traditional ones, do not take into account the semantic knowledge about the underlying domain. Without such semantic knowledge, personalization systems cannot recommend different types of complex objects based on their underlying properties and attributes. Nor can these systems possess the ability to automatically explain or reason about the user models or user recommendations. The integration of semantic knowledge is, in fact, the primary challenge for the next generation of personalization systems. In this chapter we provide an overview of approaches for incorporating semantic knowledge into Web usage mining and personalization processes. In particular, we discuss the issues and requirements for successful integration of semantic knowledge from different sources, such as the content and the structure of Web sites for personalization. Finally, we present a general framework for fully integrating domain ontologies with Web usage mining and personalization processes at different stages, including the preprocessing and pattern discovery phases, as well as in the final stage where the discovered patterns are used for personalization.