Bootstrapping Information Extraction from Semi-Structured Web Pages Andy Carlson (Machine Learning...

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Bootstrapping Information Extraction from Semi-Structured

Web PagesAndy Carlson (Machine Learning Department, Carnegie Mellon)

Charles Schafer (Google Pittsburgh)

ECML/PKDD 2008

Semi-Structured Web Pages: Vacation Rentals

Semi-Structured Web Pages: Nobel Prize Winners

3

Semi-Structured Web Pages: Museum Collections

4

Structured Data

Structured data enables better search interfaces

6

Supervised Information Extraction

Supervised IE allows a user to annotate pages and train a ‘wrapper’ for the site.

Bootstrapping IE from Semi-Structured Web Pages

Assume that we have wrappers for a number of sites in a domain and thus many records from those sites.

Can we use what we’ve learned to automatically wrap a new site in the same domain?

9

From unlabeled pages to DOM trees

Unlabeled pages from new sitetexttexttext

<img>

<html>

<body>

<h1> <h4> <div>

text

<div>

DOM tree

texttexttext

<img>

<html>

<body>

<h1> <h4> <div>

text

<div>

DOM tree

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From DOM trees to template tree

texttexttext

<img>

<html>

<body>

<h1> <h4> <div>

text

<div>

DOM tree

texttexttexttext

<html>

<body>

<h1> <h4> <div>

text

<div> <div>

DOM tree

texttexttext

<img>

text

<html>

<body>

<h1> <h4> <div>

text

<div> <div>

Template tree

Tree alignment

<div>

<div>

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Supervised setting: Labels from user annotations

Learn labels from user

annotations

Generalized template

<img>

text

<html>

<body>

<h1> <h4>

text text

Generalized extraction template

<img>

<html>

<body>

<h1> <h4>

text text text

<div>

<div>

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Bootstrapping setting: Labels from classifiers

Label data fields with classifiers

Generalized template

<img>

text

<html>

<body>

<h1> <h4>

text text

Generalized extraction template

<img>

<html>

<body>

<h1> <h4>

text text text

Bedrooms:Bedrooms:Bedrooms:Bedrooms:Bedrooms:

Boston

Las VegasNew YorkMiamiPalm SpringsNew York

Bedrooms:

2

35421

Framing the classification problem

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Boston

Las VegasNew YorkMiamiPalm SpringsNew York

Canoe

GrillDVD PlayerHeated PoolDeckGas Grill

Boston

HoustonAtlantaTopekaPhiladelphiaNew Haven

Baltimore

San JoseTopekaSeattleLas VegasYorktown

Atlanta

Las VegasBillingsGreat FallsMissoulaBozeman

City

Other

Site A Site B Site C

Amenities:Amenities:Amenities:Amenities:Amenities:Amenities:

3

36445

1/1/09

6/9/087/13/087/20/089/13/085/15/08

Bedrooms:Bedrooms:Bedrooms:Bedrooms:Bedrooms:Bedroom:

1.5

2.532.53.52

Description:

Description:Description:Description:Description:Description:

717-0474835-7694845-0923934-9720663-1111646-0957

$78

$36$14$99$13$64

Training Sites

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Comparing fields: Feature types

Content:Tokens

- Split on tokens because lots of data types have some vocabulary but order is not important.

Character 3-grams- Useful for matching “fulltime” and “full-time”

Token types (all digits, all caps, etc.)- Helpful for addresses, unique IDs, other fields with a mix of token types

Context:Precontext character 3-grams

- Sites vary their wordings, but often use variants of the same words

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Naïve classification attempt

Logistic Regression:• Each data field from training sites is a

labeled instance for each schema column

• Use features we just described

Problems:• Tens of training instances

• Tens of thousands of features

• Serious overfitting

Coarser Features: Distributional similarity

Treat each field as a distribution of values

Compute distributional similarity for each feature type:

Smooth and normalize to Skew Similarity

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Smarter classification attempt

Stacked Skews model:• Each field from each training site is a labeled instance

• Features are distributional similarity for each feature type

• Train linear regression model

• Inspired by database schema matching by [Madhavan et al. 2005]

Now:• Tens of training instances

• One feature per feature type – just a handful

• Appropriately sized learning problem

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Related work

Unsupervised wrapper induction typically doesn’t label data fields

- e.g. [Chang & Kuo, 2004] [Zhai & Liu, 2005]

DeLa system of [Wang & Lochovsky, 2003]

- Heuristic rule-based mapping of fields to labels

- Requires explicit prompts of extracted fields

[Golgher et al, 2001]

- Finds exact matches of data values and looks for consistent context

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Evaluation: Vacation rentals

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Schema: Title, Bedrooms, Bathrooms, Sleeps, Property Type, Description, Address

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Evaluation: Job listings

Schema: Title, Company, Location, Date Posted, Job Type, ID

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Results

Accuracy by schema column

• Significantly outperforms logistic regression baseline.• With a small, fixed investment of human effort, we can create wrappers for hundreds of sites in a domain.

Thank You

Results by Schema Column

Results by Web Site

Feature Type Ablation Study Results