Pang‐Ning Tan

University of Minnesota, Michigan State University

Papers

Total Citations

365

H-Index

About

Pang-Ning Tan is a leading researcher in data mining and machine learning, with a focused expertise in Web usage mining and the detection of automated Web agents. His seminal work on identifying Web robots—automated programs that crawl websites—has been foundational for the field. His most-cited paper, "Discovery of Web Robot Sessions Based on their Navigational Patterns" (2002, 268 citations), introduced novel methods to distinguish robot traffic from human users by analyzing navigation behavior, a critical challenge for accurate web analytics and server resource management. This research directly addresses the growing problem of Web robots consuming bandwidth and skewing Web Mining results. Tan further advanced this area in "Modeling of Web Robot Navigational Patterns" (2000, 30 citations) and a later refined study (2004, 58 citations), collectively establishing a framework for preprocessing web data to ensure reliable pattern discovery. His work on mining association patterns from web usage data (2002) also contributes to understanding user behavior. Tan’s contributions are essential for researchers and practitioners working on web analytics, cybersecurity, and data preprocessing, providing practical solutions for cleaning and interpreting massive web server logs.