Visualising Web Visitations: A Probabilistic Approach

  • Authors:
  • Geoff Ellis;Alan Dix

  • Affiliations:
  • Huddersfield University;Lancaster University

  • Venue:
  • IV '04 Proceedings of the Information Visualisation, Eighth International Conference
  • Year:
  • 2004

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Abstract

This paper presents a technique, the Quantum Web Field, designed to give an ambient visualisation of the current activity on a web site. It uses the paths of past visitors to the site and a self-organising map to build a diffuse 'probabilistic' mapping of pages to cells in a 2D matrix, where highly traversed page-links tend to be closer to each other. The paths of current visitors appear as intelligible trails giving a sense of purposeful human activity rather than offering detailed analysis. The visualisation is not constrained by either the complexity or the number of pages in the site.