A fast method for discovering critical edge sequences in e-commerce catalogs

Web sites allow the collection of vast amounts of navigational data – clickstreams of user traversals through the site. These massive data stores offer the tantalizing possibility of uncovering interesting patterns within the dataset. For e-businesses, always looking for an edge in the hyper-competitive online marketplace, the discovery of critical edge sequences (CESs), which denote frequently traversed sequences in the catalog, is of significant interest. CESs can be used to improve site performance and site management, increase the effectiveness of advertising on the site, and gather additional knowledge of customer behavior patterns on the site.