Abstract
Nowadays, how to gather useful and meaningful information from the Web has become challenging to all users because of the explosion in the amount of Web information. However, the mainstream of Web information gathering techniques has many drawbacks, as they are mostly keyword-based. It is argued that the performance of Web information gathering systems can be significantly improved if user background knowledge is discovered and a knowledge-based methodology is used. In this paper, a knowledge-based model is proposed for Web information gathering. The model uses a world knowledge base and user local instance repositories for user profile acquisition and the capture of user information needs. The knowledge-based model was successfully evaluated by comparing a manually implemented user concept model. The proposed knowledge-based model contributes to better designs of knowledge-based and personalized Web information gathering systems.