An Ontology-Based Search Tool in the Semantic Web

Abstract

The chapter presents a meta-search tool developed in order to deliver search results structured according to the specific interests of users. Meta-search means that for a specific query, several search mechanisms could be simultaneously applied. Using the clustering process, thematically homogenous groups are built up from the initial list provided by the standard search mechanisms. The results are more user-oriented, thanks to the ontological approach of the clustering process. After the initial search made on multiple search engines, the results are pre-processed and transformed into vectors of words. These vectors are mapped into vectors of concepts, by calling an educational ontology and using the WordNet lexical database. The vectors of concepts are refined through concept space graphs and projection mechanisms, before applying the clustering procedure. The chapter describes the proposed solution in the framework of other existent clustering search solutions. Implementation details and early experimentation results are also provided.