Abstract

A hierarchy improvement system and associated method automatically locate “weak spots” in a hierarchical organization of a Web site, where the visitors' expected locations of Web pages, Web sites, or Web points (i.e., nodes) do not coincide with their actual locations. The system mines the users' access patterns, such as backtracks, and determines the most likely locations of the Web pages by discovering or inferring backtracks. Once the expected locations are defined, the system either forwards the expected locations with a high frequency of repetition or a substantially high benefit value to the Web site administrator for corrective action, such as adding direct navigation links from the expected locations to the target pages, or automatically adding such navigation links.