AUTOMATIC VISUAL SEGMENTATION OF WEBPAGES

摘要

To provide valuable information regarding a webpage, the webpage must be divided into distinct semantically coherent segments for analysis. A set of heuristics allow a segmentation algorithm to identify an optimal number of segments for a given webpage or any portion thereof more accurately. A first heuristic estimates the optimal number of segments for any given webpage or portion thereof. A second heuristic coalesces segments where the number of segments identified far exceeds the optimal number recommended. A third heuristic coalesces segments corresponding to a portion of a webpage with much unused whitespace and little content. A fourth heuristic coalesces segments of nodes that have a recommended number of segments below a certain threshold into segments of other nodes. A fifth heuristic recursively analyzes and splits segments that correspond to webpage portions surpassing a certain threshold portion size.