A Machine Learning Approach to Building Domain-Specific Search Engines

Domain-specific search engines are becoming increasingly popular because they offer increased accuracy and extra features not possible with general, Web-wide search engines. Unfortunately, they are also difficult and timeconsuming to maintain. This paper proposes the use of machine learning techniques to greatly automate the creation and maintenance of domain-specific search engines. We describe new research in reinforcement learning, text classification and information extraction that enables efficient spidering, populates topic hierarchies, and identifies informative text segments. Using these techniques, we have built a demonstration system: a search engine for computer science research papers available at www.cora.justresearch.com. 1 Introduction As the amount of information on the World Wide Web grows, it becomes increasingly difficult to find just what we want. While general-purpose search engines such as AltaVista and HotBot offer high coverage, they often provide only low p..