Machine Learning Techniques For Detecting Untrusted Pages on the Web

The Web is both an excellent medium for sharing information, as well as an attractive platform for delivering products and services. This platform is, to some extent, mediated by search engines in order to meet the needs of users seeking information. Search engines are the “dragons” that keep a valuable treasure: information. Many web pages are unscrupulous and try to fool search engines to get to the top of ranking. The goal of this project is to detect such spam pages. We will particularly consider content spam and link spam, where untrusted pages use link structure to increase their importance. We pose this as a machine learning problem and build a classifier to classify pages into two category - trustworthy and untrusted .We use different link features, in other words structural characteristics of the web graph and content based features, as input to the classifier. We propose link-based techniques and context based techniques for automating the detection of Web spam, a term referring to pages which use deceptive techniques to obtain undeservedly high scores in search engines. We propose Naïve Bayesian Classifier to detect the content Spam and PageRank and TrustRank to detect the link spam

Collaboration between UK Universities: A machine-learning based webometric analysis

A thesis submittedCollaboration is essential for some types of research, which is why some agencies include collaboration among the requirements for funding research projects. Studying collaborative relationships is important because analyses of collaboration networks can give insights into knowledge based innovation systems, the roles that different organisations play in a research field and the relationships between scientific disciplines. Co-authored publication data is widely used to investigate collaboration between organisations, but this data is not free and thus may not be accessible for some researchers. Hyperlinks have some similarities with citations, so hyperlink data may be used as an indicator to estimate the extent of collaboration between academic institutions and may be able to show types of relationships that are not present in co-authorship data. However, it has been shown that using raw hyperlink counts for webometric research can sometimes produce unreliable results, so researchers have attempted to find alternate counting methods and have tried to identify the reasons why hyperlinks may have been created in academic websites. This thesis uses machine learning techniques, an approach that has not previously been widely used in webometric research, to automatically classify hyperlinks and text in university websites in an attempt to filter out irrelevant hyperlinks when investigating collaboration between academic institutions. Supervised machine learning methods were used to automatically classify the web page types that can be found in Higher Education Institutions’ websites. The results were assessed to see whether ii automatically filtered hyperlink data gave better results than raw hyperlink data in terms of identifying patterns of collaboration between UK universities. Unsupervised learning methods were used to automatically identify groups of university departments that are collaborating or that may benefit from collaborating together, based on their co-appearance in research clusters. Results show that the machine learning methods used in this thesis can automatically identify both the source and target web page categories of hyperlinks in university websites with up to 78% accuracy; which means that it can increase the possibility for more effective hyperlink classification or for identifying the reasons why hyperlinks may have been created in university websites, if those reasons can be inferred from the relationship between the source and target page types. When machine learning techniques were used to filter hyperlinks that may not have been created because of collaboration from the hyperlink data, there was an increased correlation between hyperlink data and other collaboration indicators. This emphasises the possibility for using machine learning methods to make hyperlink data a more reliable data source for webometric research. The reasons for university name mentions in the different web page types found in an academic institution’s website are broadly the same as the reasons for link creation, this means that classification based on inter-page relationships may also be used to improve name mentions data for webometrics research. iii Clustering research groups based on the text in their homepages may be useful for identifying those research groups or departments with similar research interests which may be valuable for policy makers in monitoring research fields; based on the sizes of identified clusters and for identifying future collaborators; based on co-appearances in clusters, if identical research interests is a factor that can influence the choice of a future collaborator. In conclusion, this thesis shows that machine learning techniques can be used to significantly improve the quality of hyperlink data for webometrics research, and can also be used to analyse other web based data to give additional insights that may be beneficial for webometrics studies

Addressing the new generation of spam (Spam 2.0) through Web usage models

New Internet collaborative media introduce new ways of communicating that are not immune to abuse. A fake eye-catching profile in social networking websites, a promotional review, a response to a thread in online forums with unsolicited content or a manipulated Wiki page, are examples of new the generation of spam on the web, referred to as Web 2.0 Spam or Spam 2.0. Spam 2.0 is defined as the propagation of unsolicited, anonymous, mass content to infiltrate legitimate Web 2.0 applications.The current literature does not address Spam 2.0 in depth and the outcome of efforts to date are inadequate. The aim of this research is to formalise a definition for Spam 2.0 and provide Spam 2.0 filtering solutions. Early-detection, extendibility, robustness and adaptability are key factors in the design of the proposed method.This dissertation provides a comprehensive survey of the state-of-the-art web spam and Spam 2.0 filtering methods to highlight the unresolved issues and open problems, while at the same time effectively capturing the knowledge in the domain of spam filtering.This dissertation proposes three solutions in the area of Spam 2.0 filtering including: (1) characterising and profiling Spam 2.0, (2) Early-Detection based Spam 2.0 Filtering (EDSF) approach, and (3) On-the-Fly Spam 2.0 Filtering (OFSF) approach. All the proposed solutions are tested against real-world datasets and their performance is compared with that of existing Spam 2.0 filtering methods.This work has coined the term ‘Spam 2.0’, provided insight into the nature of Spam 2.0, and proposed filtering mechanisms to address this new and rapidly evolving problem

Categorization of web sites in Turkey with SVM

Thesis (Master)--Izmir Institute of Technology, Computer Engineering, Izmir, 2004Includes bibliographical references (leaves: 61-63)Text in English; Abstract: Turkish and Englishix, 70 leavesIn this study of topic .Categorization of Web Sites in Turkey with SVM. after a brief introduction to what the World Wide Web is and a more detailed description of text categorization and web site categorization concepts, categorization of web sites including all prerequisites for classification task takes part. As an information resource the web has an undeniable importance in human life. However the huge structure of the web and its uncontrolled growth led to new information retrieval research areas to be risen in last years. Web mining, the general name of these studies, investigates activities and structures on the web to automatically discover and gather meaningful information from the web documents. It consists of three subfields: .Web Structure Mining., .Web Content Mining. and .Web Usage Mining.. In this project, web content mining concept was applied on the web sites in Turkey during the categorization process. Support Vector Machine, a supervised learning method based on statistics and principle of structural risk minimization is used as the machine learning technique for web site categorization. This thesis is intended to draw a conclusion about web site distributions with respect to thematic categorization based on text. The popular web directory Yahoo.s 12 top level categories were used in this project. Beside of the main purpose, we gathered several statistical descriptive informations about web sites and contents used in html pages. Metatag usage percentages, html design structures and plug-in usage are some of these information. The processes taken through solution, start with employing a web downloader which downloads web page contents and other information such as frame content from each web site. Next, manipulating, parsing and simplifying the downloaded documents takes place. At this point, preperations for categorization task are completed. Then, by applying Support Vector Machine (SVM) package SVMLight developed by Thorsten Joachims, web sites are classified under given categories. The classification results obtained in the last section show that there are some over-lapping categories exist and accuracy and precision values are between 60-80. In addition to categorization results, we saw that almost 17 of web sites utilize html frames and 9367 web sites include metakeywords

Community based Question Answer Detection

Each day, millions of people ask questions and search for answers on the World Wide Web. Due to this, the Internet has grown to a world wide database of questions and answers, accessible to almost everyone. Since this database is so huge, it is hard to find out whether a question has been answered or even asked before. As a consequence, users are asking the same questions again and again, producing a vicious circle of new content which hides the important information. One platform for questions and answers are Web forums, also known as discussion boards. They present discussions as item streams where each item contains the contribution of one author. These contributions contain questions and answers in human readable form. People use search engines to search for information on such platforms. However, current search engines are neither optimized to highlight individual questions and answers nor to show which questions are asked often and which ones are already answered. In order to close this gap, this thesis introduces the \\emph{Effingo} system. The Effingo system is intended to extract forums from around the Web and find question and answer items. It also needs to link equal questions and aggregate associated answers. That way it is possible to find out whether a question has been asked before and whether it has already been answered. Based on these information it is possible to derive the most urgent questions from the system, to determine which ones are new and which ones are discussed and answered frequently. As a result, users are prevented from creating useless discussions, thus reducing the server load and information overload for further searches. The first research area explored by this thesis is forum data extraction. The results from this area are intended be used to create a database of forum posts as large as possible. Furthermore, it uses question-answer detection in order to find out which forum items are questions and which ones are answers and, finally, topic detection to aggregate questions on the same topic as well as discover duplicate answers. These areas are either extended by Effingo, using forum specific features such as the user graph, forum item relations and forum link structure, or adapted as a means to cope with the specific problems created by user generated content. Such problems arise from poorly written and very short texts as well as from hidden or distributed information

BlogForever D2.6: Data Extraction Methodology

This report outlines an inquiry into the area of web data extraction, conducted within the context of blog preservation. The report reviews theoretical advances and practical developments for implementing data extraction. The inquiry is extended through an experiment that demonstrates the effectiveness and feasibility of implementing some of the suggested approaches. More specifically, the report discusses an approach based on unsupervised machine learning that employs the RSS feeds and HTML representations of blogs. It outlines the possibilities of extracting semantics available in blogs and demonstrates the benefits of exploiting available standards such as microformats and microdata. The report proceeds to propose a methodology for extracting and processing blog data to further inform the design and development of the BlogForever platform

EXPLORING HEALTH WEBSITE USERS BY WEB MINING

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)With the continuous growth of health information on the Internet, providing user-orientated health service online has become a great challenge to health providers. Understanding the information needs of the users is the first step to providing tailored health service. The purpose of this study is to examine the navigation behavior of different user groups by extracting their search terms and to make some suggestions to reconstruct a website for more customized Web service. This study analyzed five months’ of daily access weblog files from one local health provider’s website, discovered the most popular general topics and health related topics, and compared the information search strategies for both patient/consumer and doctor groups. Our findings show that users are not searching health information as much as was thought. The top two health topics which patients are concerned about are children’s health and occupational health. Another topic that both user groups are interested in is medical records. Also, patients and doctors have different search strategies when looking for information on this website. Patients get back to the previous page more often, while doctors usually go to the final page directly and then leave the page without coming back. As a result, some suggestions to redesign and improve the website are discussed; a more intuitive portal and more customized links for both user groups are suggested

State of the art 2015: a literature review of social media intelligence capabilities for counter-terrorism

Overview This paper is a review of how information and insight can be drawn from open social media sources. It focuses on the specific research techniques that have emerged, the capabilities they provide, the possible insights they offer, and the ethical and legal questions they raise. These techniques are considered relevant and valuable in so far as they can help to maintain public safety by preventing terrorism, preparing for it, protecting the public from it and pursuing its perpetrators. The report also considers how far this can be achieved against the backdrop of radically changing technology and public attitudes towards surveillance. This is an updated version of a 2013 report paper on the same subject, State of the Art. Since 2013, there have been significant changes in social media, how it is used by terrorist groups, and the methods being developed to make sense of it.  The paper is structured as follows: Part 1 is an overview of social media use, focused on how it is used by groups of interest to those involved in counter-terrorism. This includes new sections on trends of social media platforms; and a new section on Islamic State (IS). Part 2 provides an introduction to the key approaches of social media intelligence (henceforth ‘SOCMINT’) for counter-terrorism. Part 3 sets out a series of SOCMINT techniques. For each technique a series of capabilities and insights are considered, the validity and reliability of the method is considered, and how they might be applied to counter-terrorism work explored. Part 4 outlines a number of important legal, ethical and practical considerations when undertaking SOCMINT work