Review of Northern Light
by Greg R. Notess
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NOTE: As of Jan. 16, 2002, Northern Light closed down its public Web search, and on Jan. 18, 2002, they were acquired by divine. While Northern Light is generally considered dead as a publicly accessible search engine, as of 2/5/02 their database is still available via their enterprise search URL of nlresearch.northernlight.com, partially at usgovsearch (US government sites only), and from search forms on sites like my search page. Be sure to select "World Wide Web" to make it work. How long this access will remain is uncertain. So, this review remains available with links to the NLResearch site. However, the search forms at regular Northern Light (www.northernlight.com) now only offer access to their Special Collection documents and links to the Special Editions. |
Northern Light Search was one of the largest search engines. Introduced in August 1997, Northern Light offers a large database of Web sites along with access to full-text articles (for a fee) in their Special Collection. Full Boolean searching, truncation, a detailed Power Search, and a Business Search are available. It has also added a searchable Current News section. Use the table of contents on the left to navigate this review.
Databases: The main search screen searches both their large database of Web pages and their Special Collection. The Special Collection database includes records from over 7,100 publications including records from Special Collection includes MarkIntel, Find/SVP, WEFA, and Investext reports. The most recent two weeks of theirs news wires are available in a Current News tab. Their Special Editions link has selected publications organized, sorted, and available for free on popular topics.
Strengths:
* Rich search features (proximity, Boolean, field searching)
* Custom Search Folders
* Special Collection and News Databases
Weaknesses: See also Northern Light Inconsistencies page
* No longer supported for the public.
* No proximity operators
* No link: field searching
Default Operation: Multiple search terms are processed as an AND operation by default.
Boolean Searching: Northern Light supports full Boolean searching with the operators AND, OR, and AND NOT. Searching can be nested using parentheses. Operators can be in lower or upper case. Northern Light can also a + to require a term and a - to exclude the term. However, since an AND is the default, no + is ever required.
Proximity Searching: Phrase searching can be designated by double quotes "" around a search phrase. Note that words within a phrase will be searched in both singular and plural form. No other proximity operators are available.
Truncation: Northern Light has two truncation symbols. The unlimited truncation symbol is an asterisk * while a percent sign % represents any single character. This can be used as internal truncation or end truncation, but a minimum of four characters must appear before a truncation symbol can be used. A single term can include more than one truncation symbol. ALSO, note that all terms are automatically searched in both plural and singular forms. A term entered as plural or as singular will result in the same number of hits. There is currently no way of turning this feature off.
Case Sensitivity: Northern Light is not case sensitive. All search terms look for a match regardless of upper and lower case are searched. However, using mixed case in a search term will cause hits that make an exact case match to rank higher. Compare the results of searching NeXT as compared to just next for an example. This only works for mixed case, not a search term entered in all uppercase.
Field Searching: Field searching is available in the Power Search or by using the field name followed by a colon : followed by the field query. To search a phrase within a field, put the quotes after the colon (title:"phrase search"). A full Boolean expression can be used after the colon even with spaces. To combine a fielded search with a full text search, use the text: field. Available fields are listed below:
| Field | Explanation |
|---|---|
| title: | Hits have the term(s) in the HTML title element. title:"search engines" |
| url: | Pages have the term(s) somewhere in the URL (host name, path, or filename). |
| text: | Pages include the term(s) somewhere within the text of the document. |
| pub: | In Special Collection documents, this searches the publication title. |
| company: | In selected Special Collection documents, this searches for company information based on the company name. |
| ticker: | In selected Special Collection documents, this searches for company information based on the stock ticker. |
| recid: | In Special Collection documents, this finds a specific Special Collection document by Northern Light Document ID number. |
Limits: Both the Power Search and the Business Search have limits available. These include date, document type, publication, subjects, language, domain, and industry. Document types include Press Releases, Product Reviews, and Job Listings. The industries include over 40 broad categories such as Retail, Insurance, Telecommunications, and Economics.
Available language limits include
- English
- French
- German
- Italian
- Spanish
Stop Words: All words can be searched in Northern Light, even very common ones. It has no stop words. However, the Boolean operators of "and", "or", and "not" need to be entered with the phrase marking to be searched.
Sorting: In general, hits are sorted in order of relevance. Of far more importance is Northern Light's Custom Search Folders which organize the full set of search results into a subject, source, document type, or language folder. The subject folders use subject terms from a hierarchy developed by librarians but appear to be automatically assigned. These folders continue to be subdivided into further breakdowns until less than 26 records are contained in an individual folder. Also, when using the Power Search, results can be sorted by date (in reverse chronological order) as well as by relevance.
In the summer of 1999, Northern Light introduced clustering, or "embedded folders" as they prefer to call it. Only sites with more than one hit have the clustering, and it is marked with a More results from this site designation at the end of the display. In the Special Collection hits, More results from this publication is used.
Display: The display includes the title, URL, date, a brief extract, site type, and document type. Northern Light used to display 25 records at a time, but in the summer of 1999 switched to a paltry 10 records. To get 25 again, add &us=25 to the end of the URL after a search or use the NLResearch Power Search. Also, a More results from this site will appear for links to other pages on the same site. These are sorted by relevance score with the highest relevance score listed in the regular results. If the second highest scoring record is close enough to the first, the score and title of that page will appear after the URL.
Documentation:
General Help
Search Help
Press Releases
News and Notes:
Northern Light announces that as of Jan. 16, 2002 it will "will no longer be providing free Web search capabilities to the general public." However, their Special Collection, free News search, and their Special Editions will continue to be accessible to the general public.They will also continue to market their products to enterprises. On Jan. 22, 2002, divine, inc. acquired Northern Light. See the Northern Light press release or the divine press release.
Northern Light began offering alerts on Oct. 14, 1999. An account is required, but accounts can be set up for free without having to provide a credit card number. The alerts run a specified search on the Northern Light database (the user can choose which database) and then sends email to you when the search finds new material. The site redesign which debuted Sept. 8, 1999 has also improved Northern Light's speed. It removed the WWW and Special Collection graphics which used to display on the right side of the screen after each hit. It brought back the ability to limit their Simple Search to just Web or Special Collection (or some of its components). Also, Northern Light launched a major advertising campaign on September 13, 1999.
Northern Light has another URL: www.nlresearch.com. This connects to the interface seen by Northern Light's enterprise customers. What's different about it? The simple search defaults to searching only their Special Collection. New additions to their Special Collection would often show up there first as well as new features like their shopping cart software. As of early 2002, with the demise of the public Web search engine at www.northernlight.com, the nlresearch site has continued to provide access to the Web database, but this may not last for long.
Northern Light also offers usgovsearch as a separate service. In conjunction with NTIS, Northern Light introduced usgovsearch for searching U.S. federal government Web sites, the NTIS bibliographic database, and Northern Light's Special Collections. Free searching was initially available to public libraries, K-12 public school libraries, and depository libraries. Otherwise a daily, monthly, or annual charge was required for access to the service. The government Web sites included in this service went well beyond the simple limiting of a search to .gov and .mil top level domains available in the Power Search on regular Northern Light. As of Dec. 2001, the NTIS database was no longer available from usgovsearch.
For a more detailed review of early Northern Light, see my article Northern Light: New Search Engine for the Web and Full-Text Articles in Database 21(1):32-37, Feb.-Mar. 1998.