PolyUQuest: Verifiable Structure-Aware Web RAG over Heterogeneous Graphs

Abstract

Existing retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems treat web pages as flat text, losing the structural and semantic signals encoded in HTML. We present PolyUQuest, a verifiable, structure-aware web RAG framework built on a heterogeneous graph that unifies hyperlink topology between pages, DOM hierarchy within pages, and entity-relation knowledge across pages. A two-tier router dispatches each query to one of three retrieval modes matched to its structural need, including direct block retrieval, cross-page graph traversal, and multi-hop entity reasoning. Each answer carries traceable provenance: every cited block records its source page, heading path, and entity links, so users can inspect the structural evidence behind a claim. We evaluate on the official websites of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU), comprising 4,240 pages, 31,086 DOM blocks, 29,119 entities, and 37,680 relations, together with a multi-type evaluation benchmark. PolyUQuest improves correctness, coverage, and faithfulness over the evaluated baselines while maintaining query-time token consumption comparable to ChunkRAG and substantially below the graph-based RAG baselines. The demonstration provides an interactive interface for inspecting cited answers, comparing retrieval traces across routing modes, and exploring evidence graph paths. PolyUQuest is being prepared for deployment as a student-facing QA service at PolyU.

Accepted at CIKM 2026 Demo Track