This article is cited in 1 paper

Computer science

Application of webometrics methods for analysis and enhancement of academic site structure based on page value criterion

A. M. Nwohiri^a, A. A. Pechnikov<sup>b

a</sup> University of Lagos, University Road, Akoka, Yaba, Lagos, 101017, Nigeria
^b Institute of Applied Mathematical Research of the Karelian Research Centre, Russian Academy of Sciences, 11, Pushkinskaya ul., Petrozavodsk, 185910, Russian Federation

Abstract: This paper describes a formalized procedure for exploring a site using webometrics methods. The procedure involves gathering details on a site's structure, constructing and exploring the resulting webgraph, defining the correctness criterion, identifying control actions that would improve the structure under the given criterion, testing the correctness criterion on real-world examples and developing recommendations on improving the structure. PageRank is used as a criterion to evaluate the value of web pages. The value is determined by the presence/absence of a link pointing to that page from the homepage of the site. Going by the correctness criterion, valuable pages of a site should have the highest PageRank among all other pages of that site. Control action consists of removing non-valuable directories (and transforming them into independent sites), whose root page has a high PageRank. Experiments are conducted on three faculty sites of major universities in USA, Russia and Nigeria. The approach is shown to be applicable and reasonable in all cases.

Keywords: website, graph, PageRank, universities, data mining, website structure, web harvesting, web mining, URL.

UDC: 004.738.5:51-7

MSC: 68R10

Received: March 3, 2019
Accepted: June 6, 2019

Language: English

DOI: 10.21638/11701/spbu10.2019.304

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