Automating Change Detection and Notification of Web Pages (Invited Paper)

Search engines provide an invaluable capability to search the web which is growing at a fast pace. In addition to growth, the content of the pages on the web is also changing continuously. Periodical retrieval of pages for understanding changes is both inefficient and time consuming. Search engines do not help in this aspect of information retrieval at all. In this paper, we present an overview of WebVigiL, a system that automates the change detection and timely notification of HTML/XML pages based on userspecified changes of interest. User interest, specified as a sentinel/profile, is automatically monitored by the system using a combination of learning-based and event-driven techniques. The system is currently available for use.