Web Usage Mining: User Navigational Patterns Extraction from Web Logs

Web Usage Mining is the process of applying data mining techniques to the discovery of usage patterns from data extracted from Web Log files. In this paper, we define the notion of a “user session” as being a temporally compact sequence of web accesses by a user. We also define a new distance measure between two web sessions that captures the organization of a web site. Web usage mining consists of three phases, namely preprocessing, pattern discovery, and pattern analysis. Web usage information mining could help to engage new customers, maintain current customers, track customers who are leaving web site.