The First ReSearch Engine: Northern Light

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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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Whats 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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Whats 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
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