Infoseek Enhances Ultraseek(TM) Server to Support Rapidly Growing Intranet Market
PR Newswire - April 14, 1998 06:30
SEEK %MLM %CPR %PDT V%PRN P%PRN
Ultraseek Server Indexes 50 Percent Faster, Up to 15,000 Documents an Hour
SUNNYVALE, Calif., April 14 /PRNewswire/ -- Responding to the tremendous
growth of content and usage on corporate, government and university intranets
and websites, Infoseek Corporation (Nasdaq: SEEK) today announced the release
of Ultraseek Server 2.0, a significantly enhanced version of their
award-winning* search technology. Enhancements include: increasing the
document indexing speed by 50 percent, adding an intuitive, graphical user
interface to advanced search features, a "find similar" feature, the ability
to search newsgroups, and support for six European languages in addition to
English (French, German, Spanish, Dutch, Italian and Portuguese). Ultraseek
Server is a software product that offers the same spidering, indexing, and
searching technology used by infoseek.com and is available for use on
corporate Intranets and large public Web sites. The product has enjoyed wide
market acceptance in the year since it was first released, having been
deployed by companies such as Sun, 3Com, Boeing, Sony Online, NASA, and the
birthplace of the Web, CERN.
"With over 300 sites and 250,000 documents, our site requires very high
volume indexing," said Katherine Forte, project manager for Decision Systems
Technology, Inc. (DSTI), technology consultant to the U.S. Department of
Education. "The indexing process with Ultraseek Server 2.0 is fast, efficient
and highly customizable. It allows us to tune for peak performance at each
site and filter out unwanted content. Our users like the fast, easy interface
and receive reliable, relevant results."
"Major intranets and public web sites need a search engine that can scale
to index hundreds of thousands of documents per day," said Steven T. Kirsch,
chairman of Infoseek Corporation. "More and more sites are including
documents that change daily, and they require intelligent spidering that can
predict which documents need frequent checking. Ultraseek Server is more
frequently becoming the solution of choice for webmasters and IS
professionals."
Rapidly Growing Market
Corporate intranets are undergoing rapid growth. According to
International Data Corporation (IDC), 73% of organizations in the United
States have had an intranet in place for over one year, and an average of over
42% of employees access intranets. As intranets become an established method
for disseminating information, the amount of content placed on them burgeons,
and information becomes more difficult to find. An indicator of the scale of
this trend is that IDC expects intranet equipment to outsell internet
equipment ten-to-one by the year 2000.
Infoseek sees expanding opportunities in search technology that helps
webmasters make their sites more accessible and helpful to users. With the
explosion of content on intranets, extranets, and public web sites, user
frustration with the difficulty of finding information is becoming
increasingly recognized as a problem that webmasters must address. Search
technologies provide the single most important tool for helping users find
information on web sites, and effective search coupled with scalable,
real-time, cross-site spidering is becoming a necessity on major sites.
Ultraseek Server Version 2.0 is Faster, Smarter, More Flexible, and
International
Faster -- The indexing speed of the new release of Ultraseek Server is
fifty percent faster than before with the ability to index up to
15,000 documents per hour. Ultraseek Server, which now has more than
20 million documents under management at customer intranet and public sites
worldwide, has been adopted widely because of its recognized superiority in
indexing speed and performance.
Smarter and More Flexible -- Ultraseek Server v. 2.0 features an intuitive
graphical user interface to its Advanced Search option. The new interface was
designed to provide easy access to advanced search features for the full range
of users, from neophytes to experts. The new features reduce the time the
user spends searching and provides a list of results that is focused on the
most relevant documents. For example, if a user wanted information on a
specific topic, but wanted to eliminate certain sources for the search, this
interface gives the user a clear and easy way to specify that query.
In addition, the new version of Ultraseek Server includes a new "Find
Similar" feature. This is of particular value to someone using the Web to do
research on a general topic, but who does not know the exact documents and
topics they are looking for. Once the user finds a document that meets their
needs, they can select "Find Similar," and the Ultraseek Server search engine
constructs a query based on a lexical analysis of that document and finds
other documents that are "similar" to the one found. This allows the user to
proceed in a more productive exploratory mode, rather than a narrow search
mode.
Ultraseek Server now supports the indexing and searching of content on
newsgroups. This is especially important to business professionals who track
customer newsgroups for market research or use newsgroups internally in
workgroup forums.
Because Ultraseek Server includes its own Web server and page building
scripts, content providers can tailor the product to fit their own needs. For
most public Web sites, Webmasters want total control of the look and feel of
the search mechanism, and the ability to add value through unique features.
Ultraseek Server is completely customizable to meet whatever needs an
administrator has for adding search capabilities to their Web sites.
International -- The World Wide Web is just that, worldwide, and to
support its rapid deployment in International markets, Ultraseek Server v. 2.0
now supports six European languages in addition to English. Lexical analysis
enables users to obtain search performance equivalent to English in French,
German, Spanish, Dutch, Italian, and Portuguese. Natural language, phrase
extraction, stemming, pluralization, and other lexical enhancements to queries
are now available in these languages. In addition a separate product,
Ultraseek Server - J, is available to support Japanese.
Pricing and Availability
Ultraseek Server v. 2.0 is available immediately. Infoseek has
established a flexible licensing price structure, starting at $995 for
1,000-document sites, $4,995 for 10,000-document sites and subsequent price
breaks for handling up to millions of documents on a network cost-effectively.
A trial version is also available now for free downloads from the Infoseek
Software Web site at software.infoseek.com.
The software is currently in use at a number of public sites across the
web and behind firewalls on corporate Intranets at many others. Some of the
public sites where Ultraseek Server can be used include computer manufacturer
Sun Microsystems ( sun.com ); major electronics vendor, Sony
Electronics ( sel.sony.com ); the online publishing magazine
Publish ( publish.com ); CSX, the transportation and freight
company ( csx.com ); the National Geographic media company
( nationalgeographic.com ); Metricom, the wireless modem provider
( metricom.com ); and IDG, the world's largest information and
research provider ( idg.net ).
About Infoseek
Based in Sunnyvale, Calif., Infoseek Corporation is a connected media
company and a leading Internet navigation service that is designed to be
everyone's first choice on the Internet.
Infoseek is one of the most popular sites on the Internet because its
search service is both easy to use and extremely powerful, allowing both
novice and professional users to find information on the Web quickly and
easily.
By offering intelligent channels and one of the world's largest
directories of Web sites organized by topic, Infoseek provides consumers with
a familiar and meaningful search experience in addition to accurate,
high-quality search results. Infoseek has commerce and/or content
arrangements with entities including AmeriTrade Holding Corporation
(Nasdaq: AMTD), Auto-By-Tel, Borders Group, Inc. (NYSE: BGP), CMP Media, Inc.
(Nasdaq: CMPX), Datek Online, Inc., DLJ/Direct, Microsoft Corporation
(Nasdaq: MSFT), PeopleLink Inc., Bell Atlantic (BEL), UPS, and Reuters.
Infoseek's World Wide Web site and Internet navigation services can be
accessed at infoseek.com. For more information on Infoseek's
software portfolio, visit software.infoseek.com.
This press release contains forward looking statements regarding the
potential size of the Intranet market, Ultraseek Server's performance
characteristics and the ability of Infoseek to capitalize on the market for
products such as Ultraseek Server. Actual results could differ materially due
to various factors, including competitive products, the market's acceptance of
this new product and other factors. Reference is made to the Company's
periodic reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission for a
further discussion of the Company's business and risk factors that may affect
operating results,
NOTE: Infoseek, Ultraseek, and the Infoseek logo are trademarks of
Infoseek Corporation, which may be registered in certain jurisdictions. Other
product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.
* Network Computing Editors' Choice Award, October, 1997
SOURCE Infoseek Corp.
/CONTACT: Amanda Higgins of Infoseek, 408-543-6930, or
ahiggins@infoseek.com/
/Company News On-Call: prnewswire.com or fax, 800-758-5804,
ext. 113541/
/Web site: software.infoseek.com
/Web site: infoseek.com
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