VIPS & Page segmentation

[mathews]

VIPS is an acronym for Vision-based Page Segmentation, which is just an offshoot of the general topic of page segmentation. This is born out of a research paper presented by Microsoft. It analyses how a user understands web layout structures based on visual perception and is independent from the underlying code and technologies. Each section of the page is segmented into blocks, and different degrees of relevance are put on each block. This explains one reason why links in content areas are more heavily weighed than sidebar and navigational links (another reason is through the use of shingling algorithms, which I’ll get into on another question). Since this is a visual topic, I’ll give you a visual example from the research paper: