Mining the Tagged Web

Searching the World Wide Web for authoritative sources of information about a given topic can be a daunting task. Consulting Google to track down “jaguar,” for example, generates an alarming list of more than 7 million documents—a mad muddle of entries about cars, animals, sports teams, computers, and a town in Poland.

One reason for Google’s current success as a search engine, however, is its uncanny ability to place relevant documents high in its listings.