Statistical Methods for Profiling Users in Web Usage Mining

This chapter aims at providing an overview about the use of statistical methods supporting the Web Usage Mining. Within the first part is described the framework of the Web Usage Mining as a branch of the Web Mining committed to the study of how to use a website. Then, the data (object of the analysis) are detailed together with the problems linked to the pre-processing. Once clarified, the data origin and their treatment for a correct development of a Web Usage analysis,the focus shifts on the statistical techniques that can be applied to the analysis background, with reference to binary segmentation methods. Those latter allow the discrimination through a response variable that determines the affiliation of the users to a group by considering some characteristics detected on the same users.