The search sites listed below are all powered with the AltaVista Search Intranet eXtension 97 or the AltaVista Search Developers' Kit 97 products. All of these sites are publicly accessible. World Wide Web sites. Use them to demonstrate AltaVista Search Intranet eXtension 97 and the AltaVista Search Developers' Kit 97.

We also have many customers who have installed AltaVista Search solutions for their private intranets and other information repositories based on document management systems and databases. Contact your local AltaVista or Digital representative for more details and references.

Check out our demonstration tips section for insights on delivering high quality demos that will help you close sales.

Just click on the hyperlinks to show these sites to your prospects and customers. If you have any comments or suggestions, please send them to bob.lehmenkuler@digital.com.

Commercial Businesses

AltaVista Search Intranet eXtension 97 Powered Sites

Digital Search Site -- This is Digital Equipment Corporations official, company wide public search site. We used the customization capabilities to meet Digital's specific objectives for this search site. It indexes and allows queries to information contained in hundreds of web servers. Users can limit their search results to specific information domains or country by making a dialog box selection. The choices displayed in the dialog are arbitrarily determined by the search site administrator

Digital_Search_Site_2.jpg (36687 bytes)

This is a good example of our new tabbed search dialog. The search site administrator can easily create tabs to help users navigate through this search site and Digital's public web pages. Digital wanted to make it easy for our users to reach the AltaVista Search site on the WWW. When the user clicks on the "Internet Search" tab they are taken directly to the AltaVista Search site on the WWW.

Digital_Search_Site.jpg (10094 bytes)

Demo Tips -- Try looking for +NT in the "All Digital Web Servers" information domain. Then do the same search in another information domain. Be sure to point out how the results change to reflect the modified query.

Digital Intranet Search Site -- This is Digital Equipment Corporations official, company wide private intranet search site. It indexes and allows queries to information contained in over 1,600 web servers. These web servers are managed by individuals, departments, groups, divisions, business units, and corporate IS. To demo this site, you will need access to the Digital network.

Demo Tips -- Try looking for +AltaVista +"selling sheet".

GilletteSoccer.com -- The AltaVista Intranet 97 powered search site will connect you with almost anything associated with soccer across the world.

Demo Tips -- Try looking for +"tournament regulations" +Asia.

International Rectifier -- International Rectifier is a major worldwide supplier of power semiconductors. These are key power conversion components that make electricity use less energy and work smarter in virtually every type of modern electrical and electronic equipment.

Demo Tips -- Try looking for "structural blueprint". This will take you to a PDF file that shows International Rectifier's site map.

McAfee -- This software site is run by Network Associates. Network Associates is made up of McAfee and the software companies McAfee has acquired over the last few years. This company focuses on network security and management.

Demo Tips -- Try looking for repair* Word macro virus. This is not a phrase search. Just type in these four words. You will get several hundred hits. But, the right hit will be the first one in the list.

NEM Online -- "The Network for Excellence in Manufacturing Online is a computer-based information system developed by Michigan State University and its partners to support the activities of manufacturing assistance providers and manufacturers in the state of Michigan. The information infrastructure includes access to both private and public computer-based resources through cataloging. The project also encourages and facilitates communication between manufacturing assistance providers, manufacturers, and professional experts in manufacturing and business."

This search site is indexing over 2,000 Web sites totaling over 100,000 Web pages.

Demo Tips -- Try looking for +9002 +aerospace.

New Media.Com -- This popular magazine has all their back issues, web and print, available to all their users. AltaVista Search Intranet 97 lets their readers find what they are looking for quickly and easily.

Demo Tips -- Try looking for "Searching with Speed". You will find an AltaVista Search Intranet 97 product review.

Oracle - Oracle's first web page says they are "the leader in information management". Oracle uses   AltaVista Search Intranet 97 to make it easy for their customers and prospects to find specific information within their web site.

Demo Tips -- Try looking for +Oracle8 +data.warehous*.

PC World Online Site Search -- AltaVista Search Intranet eXtension 97 provides search and retrieval for the PC World Web site. They have separated their AltaVista Search index into two sections. One is dedicated to articles. The other is dedicated to their shareware library. This is another good example of a customized search site.

Demo Tips -- Try looking for winzip in the Shareware Library. Use the return key to start your search.

Toronto Dominion Bank -- AltaVista Search Intranet 97 provides search and retrieval for this Canadian bank. Try looking for a net worth calculator with this query.

Demo Tips -- Try looking for +"net worth" +calculat*.

 

AltaVista Search Developers' Kit 97 Powered Sites

InteliHealth - This site is run by Johns Hopkins University. Their electronic medical library has access to nearly 1 million pages of health information that's accurate, up-to-date and action-oriented... all at your fingertips. Just make your selections in any of several ways and hit the search button.

Johns Hopkins provides two levels of information. One is free to anyone. The other is considered premium content. For a limited time period, they are making this material available at no charge to registered users.

Demo Tips -- Try looking for +headache +"ice cream".

Internet Data Warehouse with Ad hoc Search from SAIC Telefusion® -- This is an SAIC proof of concept demonstration. The end product of this project will produce a "Solution Set" which enables customers to perform rapid search of large stores of data, over a network using a COTS web browser. The cornerstone of this IR&D project is the AltaVista search engine. The proof of concept will be developed on an MS Windows NT platform, extracting data from a relational database, such as Oracle.

Demo Tips -- Try looking for Carl Smith of Dayton, TX. Use the specific search fields and make these four terms "required".

This demo uses the same 1.2 million record Microsoft Access database referenced above.

J&B Information Services – Red Sector A, an AltaVista Systems Integration partner, specializes in integrating business systems with Internet technologies. They built this application for J&B Information Services. AltaVista Search added super quick, super accurate search and retrieval to J&B's bankruptcy database. This is a demonstration site. What you can search for is limited for obvious reasons. Be sure to read the "About this demonstration" page.

Demo Tips -- Look for michael west. Categorize him as a "creditor", a "subject" and as a "judge". Point out how the results change.

NovaQuest Info Systems -- NovaQuest's AltaVista Search Developers' Kit 97 powered site sells information systems hardware and software. You can search by product name, pricing and part numbers. You can even order the software you find. (But, not from this demo account.)

Demo Tips -- You need a demo account and password to use this site. The demo account is guest. The password is demo01. It may take a few tries to get into the demo account.

You are looking for FREELANCE GRAPHICS 97 WIN95/NT. You need to put this into the filter dialog box. Make sure you make your other choices match the following illustration.

After you click on the SEARCH button you will get the following Web page.

If you click on one of the three choices you will be able to place an order for the software you just selected.

SAIC Telefusion® -- SAIC is a leading systems integration vendor. This web page demonstrates the difference between an AltaVista powered database search versus traditional SQL searches. This is an effective demo to answer the "Why shouldn't I just use my database's internal search and retrieval capabilities?" question.

This example also demonstrates the use of AltaVista to index databases instead of using ODBC and/or SQL technologies. The database used in this example is Microsoft Access database with about 1.2 million records from the white pages. One of the largest strengths and the greatest source of problems of the database administrator has been allowing users to have the ability to run ad-hoc queries against corporate databases. One badly formed SQL could bring a large database to a screeching halt or slow it down so that no other queries and database applications can be used. It is often difficult to educate end-users as to the structure and definition of the fields and data stored in a database. With the development of web-based search interfaces for databases, security is a new concern for the database administrator since not all information in a database is meant for everyone to see. In addition, malicious users would like to gain access to that information or just cause havoc with the database.

Demo Tips -- Do this demo in its own browser window. There is very little interaction in this demonstration. It has a predetermined query that it passes to the AltaVista Search index. It also passes the same query, written in SQL, to the Microsoft Access database. The demo essentially compares response time between the two alternative querying methods. Go to this page early in your demo sequence. Show how fast the AltaVista Search powered query is. Periodically go back to this page to check on the SQL query's progress.

Education

These universities use AltaVista Search products to help their students and faculty find information buried within their campus intranets.

Educational institution do not like spending money and all of these customers looked at freeware and shareware search and retrieval solutions before deciding that AltaVista Search products were their best choice. The common denominators between their decision rationales were scalability / scope and the total cost of ownership.

AltaVista Search Intranet eXtension 97 software allowed them to use either a centralized or decentralized search server approach. With AltaVista Search Intranet eXtension 97 one search server could handle their entire Web environment. They also discovered that the day-to-day care and feeding costs of an AltaVista Search Intranet eXtension 97 search site was minimal compared to the other search and retrieval software's multiple and even single site installation requirements.

AltaVista Search Intranet eXtension 97 Powered Sites

Michigan State University -- Try looking for information about job opportunities in the manufacturing sector that require an MBA degree on this AltaVista Search Intranet eXtension 97 powered Web Site.

Demo Tips -- Use this query: +manufacturing +MBA +jobs.

Nanyang Technological University - This university is in Singapore. Try looking for the transcript of a lecture you missed with this query.

Demo Tips -- Use this query: +AB113 +"lecture 5"

Objetivo -- This is the UNIP (University Paulista) and Colegio Objetivo AltaVista Search Intranet eXtension 97 powered Web site. Books and other published materials have been indexed along with University Web servers.

Demo Tips -- Use this query: "WordPerfect 6 for Windows" to get a book on WordPerfect 6 for Windows.

OncoLink -- This site is run by the University of Pennsylvania Cancer Center. This is a patient friendly site aimed at helping people dealing with cancer.

Demo Tips -- Use this query: +"skin cancer" +screening.

 

UNICAMP -- This is the Sao Paulo, Brazil State University AltaVista Search Intranet eXtension 97 powered search site. AltaVista Search Intranet eXtension 97 is part of the university's library system. AltaVista Search Intranet eXtension 97 makes it easy for students and other users to find thesis, published papers and books.

 

University of California, Davis -- According to Ken Weiss, of U.C. Davis' Information Technology Department, the decision to purchase AltaVista Search took very little time. "I downloaded the Eval Kit, installed it, and had it up and running in about half an hour." His decision criteria included: the ability to index multiple servers, scalability and easy maintenance.

U.C. Davis has over 350 Web servers. Over 200 of those servers feature content. Their AltaVista Search powered site indexes 176,802 documents. The main U.C. Davis page gets 65–75,000 hits per week. Web traffic evenly split between internal and external visitors. The U.C. Davis search page gets 13,000 searches a week. Ninety percent of those searches are from external traffic.

Weiss spends about 2 hours per month in maintenance. U.C. Davis allocates one-quarter of a full-time employee to site management (Other equivalent-sized Universities using other search engines allocate 1–3 full-time employees to this task.)

Their server is an Intel, Pentium Pro 200, 256 MB RAM, with a 4 GB disk.

This site provides search and retrieval for the following document / web formats.

HTML Acrobat Excel
Word SGML WordPerfect
RTF Postscript Plain Text

 

Demo Tips -- You can find almost anything about anything from the U.C. Davis Web sites. See what you get with this query +el.nino +soybeans.

University of Pennsylvania -- The University of Pennsylvania has approximately 200 Web servers holding 150,000 Web pages. They are running AltaVista Search Intranet eXtension 97 and other applications on an Alpha 2100 system.

Demo Tips -- Try looking for +"dental school" +applicant* +registration. This will take you to Web pages that will help you register for the School of Dentistry.

University of Texas at Austin -- This AltaVista Search Intranet eXtension 97 powered Web site allows users to change the user interface from English to French, Spanish, and German.

Demo Tips -- Try looking for information on photosynthesis with this query: photosynthesis.

Yale University -- Try looking for course information on this AltaVista Search Intranet eXtension 97 powered Web site.

Demo Tips -- The search string +"financial statement analysis" +"ppm 812" will find the course outline and the final assignment. You can also try looking for a book title like "Man's Search for Meaning".

Government

AltaVista Search Intranet eXtension 97 Powered Sites

Government of Quebec -- This site show's off AltaVista Search multi-lingual capabilities. Much of the material contains French and English in the same document. The site's user interface is available in English, French and Spanish. They also took advantage of the AltaVista Search AVSHE customization templates to let users limit their queries to specific information domains.

Government_of_Quebec.jpg (32729 bytes)

Demo Tips -- The search string "St. Lawrence Seaway" will take you to Web pages and to PDF files. Try this for all the sites first and then try it with one or more of the other information domains.

Eureka - California Government Search -- This is a one stop World Wide Web search site for all the public State of California, California city government and California county government web pages. EUREKA has also indexed the most popular documents formats such as ".doc", ".xls", ".wk1", ".rtf", ".ppt", ".pdf", ".wpd", ".wpf", ".dbf" and ".ps" documents, in addition to web pages.

Demo Tips -- Try looking for information to help compare college financial aid offers from different colleges with this query: +college +"financial aid" +compar*.

This query will return hits for word-processing files (pdf format) and web pages: "cable tv franchise fees".

AltaVista Search Developers' Kit 97 Powered Sites

MISTI -- The Missile Industry Supply-Chain Technology Initiative (MISTI) is a team effort developed by key players in the aerospace industry. MISTI goals include developing and demonstrating innovative tools and technology to support the AM3 Program. They are also targeting cost reduction in supply chains below the prime contractor level and focusing on technology-enabled tools for efficient supply chain integration (design, manufacturing, and product support).

Information is coming from many different corporate and organizational sites. This is a multi-company environment. Information is also hosted on many different database applications. AltaVista Search makes it possible to do one query that finds the relevant information. No special training or end user applications are necessary.

Demo Tips -- This is a very specialized search site designed for a very specialized audience. You want to stress the multi-company and multi-information repository aspects of this search and retrieval solution.

First, click on the Search button. Next, click on the Search Basic button. This will take you to a dialog box like the one below.

Next, fill it in to match this illustration and click on the submit button.

You have asked AltaVista Search to find all the M/ACom switch limiter products. The results are a compilation of data from multiple suppliers and information resources.

Country Search Sites

Belcast -- This AltaVista Search Intranet eXtension 97 powered search site covers the country of Belgium. It is indexing over 750,000 Web pages. It also has a Value Added Link (VAL) connection with the AltaVista Search Service.

Demo Tips -- Belgium is famous for its chocolate. Try looking for: chocolate +Guylian. Use the "Belgium Search" dialog box. This will take you to right to the source of this famous chocolateer.

Blue Window -- This AltaVista Search Intranet eXtension 97 powered search site covers the country of Switzerland. It is a good scalability example for the AltaVista Search Intranet eXtension 97 software. This site indexes 1,557,000 pages on 14,218 servers. It also has a Value Added Link (VAL) connection with the AltaVista Search Service.

Demo Tips -- Try looking for the Biner hotel in Zermatt, Switzerland with this query +hotel +Biner +Zermatt.

Finnish Telecom's Search Site -- This AltaVista Search Intranet eXtension 97 powered search site covers the country of Finland. It also has a Value Added Link (VAL) connection with the AltaVista Search Service.

Demo Tips -- Try looking for +ski* +jump* +Kuopio. This will take you to Finnish Web pages that contain lots of information about ski jumping in Kuopio.

Fireball –This AltaVista Search Intranet eXtension 97 powered Web site covers the country of Germany. They have done a great deal of user interface customization. Much of this design work was done with the University of Berlin. It also has a Value Added Link (VAL) connection with the AltaVista Search Service.

Demo Tips -- The query +Olympics +Sydney +weather will take you to information about the weather conditions the Olympians will face during the Sydney games.

SURFnet -- This AltaVista Search Intranet eXtension 97 powered search site covers the Netherlands. It is Holland's university network connection. SURFnet also does some specialized newsgroup indexing. SURFnet used AltaVista Search Intranet eXtension 97 customization features to modify the user interface. Boolean expressions are automatically added to the users search request through a dialog driven user interface.

Demo Tips -- First, click on one of the Zoeken buttons. Half way down the next page you will see a search engine hyperlink. This will take you to the SURFnet search page. Try looking for the malva sylvestris tulip. Just fill in the dialog box as shown below.

Religious Organizations

Vatican – This AltaVista Search Intranet eXtension 97 powered Web site indexes the Vatican's public Web servers and other World Wide Web sites. The site is designed to meet the needs of a multi-national audience. Every Web page is published in Italian, English, German, French, Spanish and Portuguese.

Demo Tips -- The query +Cuba +pope +visit will take you to a web page that details the Pope’s upcoming visit to Cuba.

Demo Techniques to Prove AltaVista Search Advantages

Practice your demo before you start performing in front of a live audience. - This is the best way to avoid surprises.
Make sure your demo site has a good Internet connection. - Slow network performance will destroy your demonstration. Practice your demo using the network connection you plan to use with the prospect.
Bookmark the sites you plan to use during your demonstration. - This will let you move quickly between your demonstration segments.
Performing a good demonstration is like telling a story. Make sure you have a beginning, middle and end. - List the points you want to make and use the demonstration to prove those points.
Know your audience before you start the demo. - The Advanced Query page will make many points with information retrieval specialists. Simple Query will make points with casual users and non-technical audiences.
Search for things that are relevant to your audience. - This will automatically hold audience interest. Let them see how valuable this would be to them for their everyday work problems.
Do searches against your own AltaVista Search Intranet eXtension 97 server. - Install the software on your Intranet and show how you use it to do your everyday work.
Use the Simple Query Web page. - Put in lots of words relevant to your query. Try cutting and pasting a relevant paragraph into the search window then hit the submit button. This is treated as a weighted OR query. AltaVista Search gives words that are infrequently found inside the index higher weighting in the relevance ranking. Do not use quotation marks around the paragraph. If you do, it is handled as a phrase search.
Use the Advanced Query page. - Show this page's features one at a time to avoid confusing your audience. Show how adding a Boolean expression affects the results. Show how adding a word to the relevance ranking box controls how AltaVista Search lists the results.
Do exact phrase searches. - We do exact phrase searches better than any other search and retrieval software. So, show how we can find every document that contains a particular phrase or sentence. Make sure you put quotation marks around the phrase. Documents that contain the phrase at the beginning of the document get the highest ranking. The phrase "to be or not to be" is an excellent example. Show how AltaVista Search Service handles this query and then try it on the Excite World Wide Web search server. (Excite keeps their index small by removing "unremarkable words". The phrase "to be or not to be" is not remarkable according to Excite.)
Show how AltaVista Search uses "fields" to index Web documents. - Field examples include link, URL and domain. The field feature allows you to search out all the Web pages that contain a hyperlink to your Web page. For example, this query will show you how many Web pages have a hyperlink pointing to the AltaVista Search site. link:http://altavista.digital.com. As of today, over 85,000 Web pages include a hyperlink to the AltaVista Search site.
Finish off by showing the new refine features on the AltaVista Search Service Web site. – This is a great way to close your demo. It is flashy, easy and fun. It also clearly proves we are different from the competition. These capabilities will be added to our product line during the Spring and Summer of 1998.

copyright, Digital Equipment Corporation, June 1998