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The First ReSearch Engine: Northern Light®

Susan M. Stearns

Director of Enterprise Marketing

March, 1999

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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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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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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 e-mail alerts for any search topic for both Web and Special Collection content

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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

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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 e-mail 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

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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

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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