AltaVista Sets New Leadership Benchmark With AltaVista Search; Revolutionary New Way to Search Makes it Faster and Easier to Get Exactly What you Want from the Web.

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 25, 1999--

AltaVista today asserted its continuing leadership in Web search with the unveiling of the New AltaVista Search, completely re-designed to deliver what today's Web users want - direct paths to relevant results.

Four years since introducing the world's first search engine, AltaVista once again breaks new ground with a powerful way for users to zero-in on precise results by type of information. Based on the Web's most in-demand types of content, new AltaVista Focused Searching gives users one-click access to search results along eight distinct dimensions: Web pages, news, pictures, video, audio, discussion groups, directories and shopping.

The New AltaVista Search is one of several industry-leading services unveiled today as part of the New AltaVista Network at www.altavista.com.

Underlying the New AltaVista Search are several core-level technology innovations that firmly extend AltaVista's leadership, specifically in the areas of scope, relevancy and freshness. AltaVista Search debuted the world's largest index today, spanning an unprecedented 90 percent of Web sites, 250 million unique pages and 25 million multimedia objects. A powerful new relevancy formula brings "quality" pages to the top of search results. And AltaVista's new "Living Index" crawls the Web "intelligently," recording how often pages are updated, to ensure AltaVista Search always has the Web's freshest information.

"A new way for users to search smarter, combined with the powerful core technologies to make it work, place AltaVista Search far ahead of any other search site on the Web," said Greg Memo, vice president and general manager of AltaVista Search. "The innovations introduced by AltaVista Search today mark a dramatic step toward harnessing the Web's vast, but largely untapped, information wealth for the benefit of users."

AltaVista Focused Searching

Unique to AltaVista Search, Focused Searching makes accessing the types of search results users say are most important to them a simple, one-click procedure. A new user interface based on tabs offers up the Web's most popular content and information with unequaled directness and ease.

"The strategy behind Focused Searching is simple: give users direct and immediate access to the types of information we know they want," said Memo. "Everyday there are hundreds of thousands of new pages on the Web, and users don't want to wade through hundreds of search results or pore down through the layers of Web sites to find what they are after. By mirroring the Web's most sought after information in our interface, we make it dramatically easier to find exactly the information users are looking for on the first page. "

-- Multimedia

Faster, more powerful PCs, broadband Internet access and savvier users have made multimedia on the desktop mainstream. But finding that particular song, video or image on the Web has never been more challenging. AltaVista Search delivers more sight and sound than any other search engine, indexing more than 25 million photographs, videos and sound recordings. In addition to multimedia material from the Web, AltaVista offers one-stop access to the largest private collections of art and photography in the world through premier relationships with Corbis and Getty. Like no other search engine on the Web, AltaVista provides thumbnails for both still images and video clips on the results page, saving users time. Audio search results are also enhanced by the inclusion of real audio files from the CDnow library of music.

-- Shopping

This year 77 percent of online users relied on the Web to research purchases, up from 55 percent last year. The vast majority of online shoppers choose a search engine as their first stop when seeking product or retailer information. In fact, 20 percent of all search queries conducted on AltaVista are product related. To better meet the needs of online shoppers, AltaVista has introduced a specialized search specifically for shopping and online commerce. When a query is entered, shoppers directly access information to cover every aspect of the shopping process - from what to buy, where to buy it and the best prices, to links to manufacturers' Web sites, product news, reviews and comparisons.

-- News

One of the Web's greatest promises is keeping people informed about the world they live in. But tracking down news on a particular subject usually requires searching multiple Web sites. With the introduction of the AltaVista News Search, users now have direct access to up-to-the minute information from the world's most respected news sources, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, AP, Reuters and other news information providers.

-- Discussion Groups

Communities, news groups and other online forums for expressing personal viewpoints and opinions have transformed the Web into a vast town hall. Easy access to the collective perspectives of millions of Web users is a powerful tool for information seekers. Provided by new partner RemarQ, the new AltaVista Discussion Group Search enables users to search for topics of interest within tens of thousands of news groups, and message boards from all over the world. Users can reap the benefit of the viewpoints of others, express their own ideas and engage in electronic dialogue with those who share their interests.

-- Directories

When AltaVista Search users want the benefit of a human opinion on a Web page, they can now turn to the new AltaVista Directory, a vast collection of Web sites and pages reviewed by people from around the world. The new directory is based on Netscape's Open Directory Project (ODP), which has more than one million Web pages that are reviewed by human editors globally. In addition, the AltaVista Directory will soon include more than one million high quality, unique URLs from Looksmart, which uses 180 professional editors to review sites. With more than two million pages, the AltaVista Directory will easily be the largest, most comprehensive and freshest on the Web.

The Directory also includes detailed background information on any company mentioned in the results, through the new Company Fact Sheet capability. This innovative capability, made possible by information from iAtlas, is available for Web search results.

Technology Leadership

On the subject of AltaVista's technology leadership, Greg Memo said: "Since achieving the distinction of becoming the world's first Web search tool in 1995, AltaVista has continued to lead the industry with groundbreaking technological innovations. Today, yet again, AltaVista Search is raising the search technology bar in terms of index size, relevancy of results, and index freshness."

-- Largest Index

The new AltaVista Search has dramatically expanded its coverage of the Web, spanning an unprecedented 90 percent of all Web sites, and indexing in excess of 275 million un-duplicated pages and multimedia items. It is the largest index in the world.

Unlike other search engines, AltaVista Search weeds out duplicate and near-duplicate pages with a patented duplicate elimination technology. Consequently, users are spared sifting through search results which contain multiple references to the same result. To achieve an index of more than 275 million unique pages, AltaVista Search crawls about 350 million pages in total.

-- Most Relevant Results

"Providing quality results is always our top priority - we pride ourselves on the fact that users can find what they are looking for on the first page of results," said Memo. "We deliver the most relevant results in the industry on the strength of a revolutionary new technology that characterizes every page we index more thoroughly than any other web search engine."

Called "AltaVista Page Knowledge," this technology analyzes the content of the page, its meta-tags, the page's connectivity, any referring anchor text and other pertinent information. No other Web search engine takes all these variables into account when measuring relevancy. By combining the various elements of AltaVista Page Knowledge into one powerful relevancy ranking formula, AltaVista offers users the highest certainty of a satisfying result on the first page.

-- Freshest Results on the Web

With the AltaVista Search "Living Index," users are assured that the AltaVista index is not only the largest but also the freshest. The Living Index ensures that the Web pages which change most often are crawled and indexed most frequently. In addition, the Living Index becomes aware of newly-created Web sites whenever a new domain name is registered. As a result, AltaVista search is able to make its Freshness Guarantee: no search site will have fresher results than AltaVista.

About AltaVista Company

AltaVista Company is the premier media and commerce network offering Internet users up-to-the-minute news, live video, content, search and shopping resources. The company integrates unique technology, products and services to deliver relevant results faster for both individuals and businesses. By combining distinctive 'best of the Web' relationships with personalized service, the AltaVista Network at www.altavista.com creates the smartest Internet experience. AltaVista is building on its heritage of technology and innovative leadership, offering informative services including AltaVista Live!, AltaVista Search, AltaVista Shopping.com, AltaVista Local, and FreeAccess combined with the AltaVista microportal. AltaVista is a majority-owned operating company of CMGI, Inc. (Nasdaq:CMGI), Andover, Mass. Compaq Computer Corporation holds the remaining minority stake in AltaVista. AltaVista is headquartered in Palo Alto, Calif.

Note to Editors: AltaVista is registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Shopping.com and Homebase are trademarks of AltaVista Company or its affiliates. Product names mentioned herein may be trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective companies.