1 nlresearch.com The First ReSearch Engine: Northern Light® Susan M. Stearns Director of Enterprise Marketing March, 1999

2 nlresearch.com Northern Light is the premier online research engine, providing unified access in a single integrated search to information from the Web and a broad collection of premium sources previously available only on traditional high-end services.

3 nlresearch.com Introducing Northern Light  Web search engine  Premium content database  Best-in-class technology for creating, searching, and transacting document databases of highly diverse content and enormous scale  A desktop solution for all information needs - from professional research librarians to individual users

4 nlresearch.com Background  Started in late 1995 with two primary goals: –combine Web data with quality information not on the Web –use classification to cluster document results and improve search precision  Content acquisition and engineering underway by Winter 1996  Search service released in August 1997

5 nlresearch.com Database composition  Web + Special Collection documents in one db –130+ million unique web documents –7+ million premium documents from 5,400+ sources in the Special Collection  Web data aims to be exhaustive –all sites, all pages, all words –continuous crawl for new pages, updates, deletes

6 nlresearch.com Database composition (continued)  Special collection aims to be exhaustive (!) –All non-web data of value, mostly starting 1/95 –All full text, mostly fee-based ($1-$4) –Free abstracts, free real-time news –Automated on-line refund if not satisfied for up to 30 days after purchase –Constantly adding new documents from publishers and aggregators, plus new sources

7 nlresearch.com The precision problem  Huge Web database of heterogeneous items -- product brochures, research articles, news, course catalogs, personal pages, FAQ's, …  Users do not know beforehand what is available or what search parameters will be useful  Queries are usually ambiguous and under- specified - even among professional searchers

8 nlresearch.com Our Solution - Intelligent Classification and the Custom Search Folders™  Folders on left group document results while still showing most relevant documents overall on right  Opening a folder shows the documents in that folder and often produces a new, more detailed list of folders  Folders are data-driven: as specific or general as the query -- contain only documents on result list  Folders tend to emphasize best documents

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17 nlresearch.com What’s New at Northern Light?  New URL for enterprise customers - nlresearch.com  Major new premium information sources - Investext analyst reports and MarkIntel market research reports  Special Editions - online pathfinders on hot topics

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24 nlresearch.com What’s Coming Up at Northern Light?  Shopping Cart - to facilitate multiple document purchases in a single transaction  In-line clustering for Web and Special Collection  Search Alert Service - to provide alerts for any search topic for both Web and Special Collection content

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28 nlresearch.com In-line Clustering  Creates a single result list entry for clusters of articles and/or Web documents - like an embedded folder in the search results  Whenever a source document [Web site or Special Collection title] includes more than 1 result which would normally appear on the same page, a cluster is created  Includes link option to browse either the home page or the latest issues of the title

30 nlresearch.com Search Alert Service  Basic alerting service is free to all users  Includes ability to set up alert for ANY search  Results are de-duplicated and delivered to the user via with click-through to site  Enhanced product for enterprise customers likely to offer integration with intranets and other value added capabilities with price tag attached

31 nlresearch.com Northern Light: The First ReSearch Engine  Integrates access to the largest Web index with a high-quality online library of business and scholarly publications  Uses intelligent classification during indexing  Uses intelligent classification at query time to provide organized results to the searcher

32 nlresearch.com Northern Light: The First ReSearch Engine  Incorporates electronic commerce capabilities for both individual users and large enterprise accounts  Stay tuned - there is lots more to come  …………try us out at nlresearch.com or visit us at Stand 113