Web Content Extraction: a MetaAnalysis of its Past and Thoughts on its Future

Abstract

In this paper, we present a meta-analysis of several Web content extraction algorithms, and make recommendations for the future of content extraction on the Web. First, we find that nearly all Web content extractors do not consider a very large, and growing, portion of modernWeb pages. Second, it is well understood that wrapper induction extractors tend to break as theWeb changes; ; heuristic/ feature engineering extractors were thought to be immune to a Web site's evolution, but we find that this is not the case: heuristic content extractor performance also tends to degrade over time due to the evolution of Web site forms and practices. We conclude with recommendations for future work that address these and other findings.