Vicinity and Northern Light Partner to Offer First Geographically Oriented Web Search Capability; First Application of GeoSearch Technology Set to Go Live

Business Wire, April 17, 2000

Business Editors

PALO ALTO, Calif. and CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 17, 2000

Vicinity Corp. (Nasdaq:VCNT), a leading provider of Internet-based marketing infrastructure services, and Northern Light(R) Technology Inc. the developer of the world's first research engine, today introduced the first geographically enabled Web search capability.

Consumers can now find virtually anything by location on the Web -- from bike races and singles events to restaurant listings -- via Northern Light's award-winning search engine (www.NorthernLight.com) using Vicinity's GeoSearch(R) technology.

"The Web is now even more relevant to where you live, where you work and where you play," said David Seuss, chief executive officer of Northern Light. "There has been a paradigm shift, and for the first time Northern Light combines an enormous database reaching across the entire Web with powerful location filtering in a uniquely valuable service for the end user."

Through the new Vicinity GeoSearch application, Northern Light users can now include location information in a search request and receive a result listing Web pages that are sorted by their geographic relevance to the user. With this technology breakthrough, Northern Light has enhanced its position as the provider of the most comprehensive search functionality on the Internet.

"We believe that the integration of Vicinity's GeoSearch technology with Northern Light's search engine will fundamentally change the way people search the Web," said Scott Young, Vicinity's senior vice president of operations. "GeoSearch makes search engine results relevant by making the user's physical location part of the search criteria. Now when you search for bike shops in Palo Alto, the search will actually turn up the Web pages of bike shops in Palo Alto."

Vicinity GeoSearch technology allows users to search the Web for pages that contain physical address or phone number information. For example, a user can enter a query that is equivalent to "bed & breakfasts within ten miles of 111 Maple Street, Anytown, Anystate 11111." The result will be a list of the URLs of all pages the search engine determines are about bed & breakfasts and which contain a complete or partial address within ten miles of that address. As with other Vicinity products, maps and driving directions for the addresses are available.

With the commercial introduction of its patent pending GeoSearch technology, Vicinity has combined its expertise in geo-spatial searching, mapping, geocoding, databases, and large-scale systems integration with Northern Light's strength in search technology. Together the two companies applied their expertise to the biggest database of all -- the Internet. Vicinity's geographical search capability provides Northern Light users with an integrated search experience allowing their searches to go beyond the confines of the Internet and include products, services and items of interest located in the real world.

About Northern Light

Northern Light Technology Inc. headquartered in Cambridge, was founded in 1996 by a seasoned team of librarians, software engineers, and information industry professionals who recognized the need to fill a void left by other search engines and online research services. The company first introduced its research engine (www.NorthernLight.com, www.NLResearch.com for businesses and researchers) in August 1997.

Recognized as an industry leader, Northern Light has received multiple Editors' Choice awards for superior search capabilities from PC Magazine. Northern Light was also recently acknowledged by the Nielsen/Net Ratings service as one of the fastest growing sites on the Internet. Today, Northern Light's search engine is among the world's most powerful, indexing more than 220 million Web pages as well as over 20 million articles from 6,400 premium full-text sources previously available only to subscribers of expensive online services.

About Vicinity

Vicinity Corp. is a leading provider of Internet-based marketing infrastructure services for brand-name Global 2000 companies. The company's clicks-and-mortar solutions, available in 14 countries and in 10 languages, enable its more than 300 clients to direct consumers searching for a specific product or service to the nearest brick-and-mortar store that carries that product or service. Vicinity's customers include FedEx, Ford, GM, Hewlett-Packard, Hilton Hotels Corp., Marriott, McDonald's, NEC, Pizza Hut, Starbucks, Starwood Hotels, Taco Bell, Toyota, Levi Strauss & Co. and UPS. Its suite of private-label and co-branded content and services -- available via the Internet, cellular phones, WAP phones, wireless devices and landline telephones -- includes Business Finder(SM), Telephone Business Finder(SM), Wireless Business Finder(SM), BrandFinder(SM), SiteMaker(SM), MailMaker(SM), MapBlast!(R) Mapping Services, and Business Directory.

Publicly traded on Nasdaq under the symbol VCNT, Vicinity's investors include CMGI (Nasdaq:CMGI). Vicinity's strategic alliances include Inktomi (Nasdaq:INKT), Palm Computing (Nasdaq:PALM) and it is a member of the Phone.com (Nasdaq:PHCM) Alliance Program. Vicinity was established in 1995, is headquartered in Palo Alto, and has an office in Lebanon, NH. Vicinity(R) is a registered trademark of Vicinity Corp.