Netsweeper Accelerates its Algorithmic Capabilities!

Netsweeper enhances it categorization capabilities by accelerating its proprietary algorithms to detect pornography by link analysis and self-referencing techniques. Netsweeper defines “link analysis” by categorizing the webpage and all affiliated links. Each of these links is analyzed to determine the type of content and if a webpage links to many pornography related resources. It increases our accuracy in determining the final categories. Similarly, Netsweeper will also analyze the URL itself. If the page is a subpage on a pornographic site or hosted on a site known for pornography content, we will also use this information when determining the category. These two techniques are referred to as “Pornography by Association” and “Pornography by Self Referencing”, respectively.

For example, of the 600,000 pornography related pages we detected in the past 24 hour period, the link analysis assisted in over 350,000 of these URL categorizations. This is an extremely beneficial technique in properly categorizing many webpages as it:

• Enables the categorization of pages with minimal textual data
• Extends classifications to different languages not yet naively supported
• Detect pages with no words or phrases, but with links to other content

With the updates, we have increased our accuracy in a number of different situations and feel this update will improve our categorization for all customers with no false positives. If you have any questions please feel free to contact us.