AltaVista Search is the best and most famous search service on the Internet: over 31 million pages found on 476,000 servers, and four million articles from 14,000 Usenet news groups. It is accessed nearly 30 million times per weekday.

Now, AltaVista leads the way again, with a unique approach to a problem that has plagued the entire Web. LiveTopics, a new add-on capability for the AltaVista Search Public Service, helps you speedily sift through the thousands of choices a search result can present.

LiveTopics is a simple, intuitive tool for managing users' searches, and a faster, more effective way to pinpoint the information they need. When a search query returns hundreds or thousands of matching pages, clicking on an on-screen button puts them all in perspective.

LiveTopics organizes thousands of results into useful topic categories, bringing structure and meaning to the results. Results appear in clear, concise topic categories, either in HTML tables or a graphic Java interface, that provides a visual relationship between the topics. You can quickly zero in on Web pages that hold the information you're looking for.

"With LiveTopics, you can more easily understand the relationships between multiple Web pages," said Louis Monier, senior consulting engineer and architect of AltaVista Search. "By stepping back and having a higher view of your results, you can identify dependencies between topics and see connections that aren't obvious from static results pages."

Early users enthusiastically agree. "With the newest version of AltaVista search, AltaVista has done it again by taking a leadership position as the premier search engine available on the planet," according to Phillip A. De Leon, President of Onyx Computers, Inc. "In our corporation, this means less time wasted by our staff searching and more time is available conducting the research which the internet is really designed for."

"It's an excellent tool for helping people construct searches," said Philippa Gamse, President of Total.Net.Value, Inc., an Internet consulting firm. "I train people in on-line research, and AltaVista Search's new capabilities are great when you don't have a clearly structured idea. You just put in roughly what you're looking for, and get back lots of different avenues to pursue. And it's so fast!"

AltaVista Search has already received numerous awards worldwide, including PC Computing's MVP Award as 'Best Search Engine', Internet World magazine's 'Industry Award for Outstanding Service', the European Online Users Group (EUROLUG) 'Product of the Year', and the 'Cool Search Engine of the Year' award.

June 1995	Research Project began in Digital’s Palo Alto labs
December 1996	AltaVista Search Service Public Debut
May 1996	AltaVista Internet Software Debut
June 1996	Yahoo! becomes first AltaVista Search Value Added Link
July 1996	AltaVista Search My Computer PX beta released
August 1996	Telia (Sweden) and Telstra (Australia) become First AltaVista Search Global Network Partners
September 1996	AltaVista Search Intranet PX for UNIX released - C/Net Search.com begins to use AltaVista Search Technology
December 1996	AltaVista Search My Computer PX Released - Advertising begins on Search Service (DoubleClick as partner)
January 1997	AltaVista Search Intranet PX for NT released - Alam Teknokrat (Malaysia) joins Global Affiliate network

Hits	27 Million
Size of Index	32 million pages
Servers Indexed	476,000
NewsGroup	14,000

Features: Since the outset we have led the industry with outstanding technology and innovation - our web firsts are proof of this fact. Another proof point is the fact that many of our features and functionality have become the defacto standard on all search technology on the web today.

• Dynamic Categorization (A web first - Feb 11, 1997) -
• Breadth (A web first - Dec 15, 1995) - Large Comprehensive Index of the Web
  
• Natural Language Queries (A web first - Dec 15, 1995) - "What is the weather in Tokyo?"
• High speed accessibility designed for large numbers of users (A web first - Dec 15, 1995)
• NewsGroup Index Articles served via the Web (A web first - Dec 15, 1995)
• Add URL (A web first - Dec 15, 1995) - End-Users can add/delete pages directly into Index and go live w/in 24 hours
• Advanced Search capabilities - (A web first - Dec 15, 1995) - Boolean Operators - Proximity - Date
• Accurate Western European languages search capabilities (A web first - Dec 15, 1995) - Language mapping
• Image Search Capabilities - (A web first - Dec 15, 1995) - Images - Java (Applet: ) - ActiveX (Object:) - Titles (Title: )
• Link Searching (A web first - Dec 15, 1995) - Determines who points to your web pages
• First to have "tips" end user help by the query box (A web first - Dec 15, 1995)