PathRank: Web Page Retrieval with Navigation Path

This paper describes a path-based method to use the multi-step navigation information discovered from website structures for web page ranking. Use of hyperlinks to enhance page ranking has been widely studied. The underlying assumption is that hyperlinks convey recommendations. Although this technique has been used successfully in global web search, it produces poor results for website search, because the majority of the hyperlinks in local websites are used to organize information and convey no recommendations. This paper defines the Hierarchical Navigation Path (HNP) as a new resource to exploit these hyperlinks for improved web search. HNP is composed of multi-step hyperlinks in visitors’ website navigation. It provides indications of the content of the destination page. The HierPathExt algorithm is given to extract HNPs in local websites. Then, the PathRank algorithm is created to use HNPs for web page retrieval. The experiments show that our approach results in significant improvements over existing solutions.