Searching for the Semantic Internet

Search engines, directories and web browsers all deal with the Internet at the level of individual web-pages. We argue that this is too low a level of resolution for many, including the non-casual surfer, who has detailed knowledge of his/her topic of interest. We present the shopping-mall metaphor that is based on identifying tightly integrated communities of web pages, where pages procure information from each other via hyperlinks. A search operation identifies these web-page communities, rather that individual web-pages, and the communities are visualised as a Virtual Reality shopping mall for presentation on a VRML enabled web browser. Each information outlet (shop) can contain multiple information “products” (pages) gathered around a common theme. The metaphor serves to integrate both search and visualisation phases, presenting a coherent information collection to the user regardless of the search domain.