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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 underspecified - 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
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