Web Detective

Add AI-powered search functionality to any website with a single click!

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Inspiration

In the vast world of online content, finding relevant information on a specific website can be time-consuming and overwhelming. Traditional search engines provide broad results, but they often fail to deliver precise, personalized information from a specific domain. We wanted to create a solution that simplifies this process by enabling users to search for tailored results within any website efficiently.

What It Does

Web Detective is a powerful tool that allows users to:

  • Enter a website domain of interest.
  • Scrape and index its content.
  • Perform intelligent searches within the indexed data.
  • Retrieve the most relevant links based on their query.

For example, if a user is on a coding website and searches for “I want to learn regex”, Web Detective will intelligently filter the site’s content and return the most useful links related to learning regex.

How we built it

  • Backend: Built using Flask, the local server handles web scraping, indexing, and query processing.
  • Frontend: Developed with TypeScript and React for a seamless and interactive user experience.
  • AI Integration: GPT-2 is utilized to refine search queries, improving relevance and contextual accuracy.
  • Vector Search with FAISS: We use Facebook AI Similarity Search (FAISS) to efficiently index and retrieve relevant content, enabling fast and scalable similarity searches.

Challenges We Ran Into

Building Web Detective came with its fair share of challenges, including:

  • Ethical Web Scraping: Ensuring compliance with website terms of service and robots.txt restrictions.
  • Optimizing Search Relevance: Developing effective ranking algorithms to return the most meaningful results.
  • Handling Large-Scale Data: Managing and processing vast amounts of textual data while maintaining fast response times.
  • Dynamic Website Handling: Extracting content from JavaScript-heavy websites efficiently.

Accomplishments That We're Proud Of

  • Successfully building a functional and intuitive search tool that simplifies website-specific searches.
  • Implementing an efficient backend capable of scraping, indexing, and retrieving results with high accuracy.
  • Overcoming technical challenges related to web scraping restrictions, data handling, and query optimization.

What We Learned

Throughout this project, we gained valuable insights into:

  • Advanced Web Scraping Techniques: Best practices for ethical and efficient content extraction.
  • Search & Ranking Algorithms: Implementing and fine-tuning algorithms to enhance search accuracy.
  • Performance Optimization: Managing large-scale text data for high-speed querying and retrieval.
  • User Experience Design: Creating a seamless interface for effective and user-friendly interactions.

What's Next for Web Detective

We have ambitious plans for future development, including:

  • AI-Driven Search Ranking: Integrating machine learning models to improve search accuracy and relevance.
  • Multilingual Support: Expanding search capabilities to support multiple languages.
  • Real-Time Data Updates: Implementing automated indexing for dynamic content tracking.
  • User-Friendly Dashboard: Providing users with an interface to manage and customize indexed websites.
  • API Integration: Allowing developers to incorporate Web Detective’s capabilities into their applications.

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