Configurable Meta-search in the Job Domain

To aid job seekers searching for job vacancies, we have developed a new configurable meta-search engine for the human resources domain. In this paper we describe the three main components of our meta-search engine - the query interface generator, query dispatcher and information extractor - which collectively support the meta-search engine creation and usage. One of the important challenges in accessing heterogeneous and distributed data via a meta-search engine is schema/data matching and integration. We describe an approach to schema and data integration for meta-search engines that helps to resolve the semantic heterogeneities between different source search engines. Our approach is a hybrid one, in that we use multiple matching criteria and multiple matchers. A domain-specific ontology serves as a global ontology and allows us to resolve semantic heterogeneities by deriving mappings between the source search engine interfaces and the ontology. The mappings are used to generate an integrated meta-search query interface, to support query processing within the meta-search engine, and to resolve semantic conflicts arising during result extraction from the source search engines. Experiments conducted in the job search domain show that our hybrid approach increases the correctness of matching during the automatic integration of source search interfaces. Our system aims to support job meta-search providers in the rapid development of meta-search engines. Our use of a domain ontology and multiple matchers helps in the semantic understanding of job descriptions and provides a job seeker with integrated access to jobs from a variety of Websites