With the aim to improve the quality of gazetteers for geographic information retrieval systems, we present a method to detect place names employed by people submitting information to web resources. We investigate how often people refer to a place using locative phrases in web queries and address the problem of defining cognitively significant place names. We propose web mining as a means to decide whether a given particular named entity is in fact a place. Categories and Subject Descriptors H.3.3 [Information Search and Retrieval]: Retrieval Models General Terms Measurement, Experimentation, Human Factors Keywords Web Mining, Gazetteers, Vernacular Place Names
Florian A. Twaroch, Philip D. Smart, Christopher B