Enhancing retrieval with hyperlinks: A general model based on propositional argumentation systems

Fast, effective, and adaptable techniques are needed to automatically organize and retrieve information on the ever-increasing World Wide Web. In that respect, different strategies have been suggested to take hypertext links into account. For example, hyperlinks have been used to (1) enhance document representation, (2) improve document ranking by propagating document score, (3) provide an indicator of popularity, and (4) find hubs and authorities for a given topic. Although the TREC experiments have not demonstrated the usefulness of hyperlinks for retrieval, the hypertext structure is nevertheless an essential aspect of the Web, and as such, should not be ignored. The development of abstract models of the IR task was a key factor to the improvement of search engines. However, at this time conceptual tools for modeling the hypertext retrieval task are lacking, making it difficult to compare, improve, and reason on the existing techniques. This article proposes a general model for using hyperlinks based on Probabilistic Argumentation Systems, in which each of the above-mentioned techniques can be stated. This model will allow to discover some inconsistencies in the mentioned techniques, and to take a higher level and systematic approach for using hyperlinks for retrieval.