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SmartTerms™, Exclusive Taxonomy, Now Featured in Dialog Services

Optimizes Precision and Recall of Online Searches; Includes 855,000 Terms

CARY, N.C., USA (March 16, 2004) — Dialog, a Thomson (NYSE: TOC; TSX: TOC) business and a leading worldwide provider of online-based information services and integrated information solutions, said today that its new, exclusive taxonomy, SmartTerms, is now available on its Dialog Profound^® and Dialog^® NewsRoom services.

The taxonomy will be available through Dialog Intelliscope^SM, Dialog Company Profiles and Dialog NewsEdge^® later this year when new versions of those services are introduced.

Dialog earlier this month launched a new technology platform, featuring SmartTerms, for its business information, news and market research services, on which new versions of Dialog Profound and Dialog NewsRoom are now operating.

“Our new taxonomy facilitates much greater precision searching and document recall, with more granularity for more relevant results than previously,” said Craig Lathrop, Dialog chief technology officer. “For our customers, that means it’s easier to find highly relevant information quickly, with precise, additional search options available for power users as they shape complex searches.”

Continued Lathrop: “With SmartTerms, we’re taking Dialog Profound and Dialog NewsRoom — and eventually other Dialog services as they are added to the new platform — to a whole new level of sophistication and power.”

Developed over a three-year period using on-staff ontologists, SmartTerms utilizes more than 855,000 terms — twice as many as Dialog’s nearest competitor — including: 3,200 industry terms, 375 subject terms, 500 geographic location terms, 800,000 company names (approximately 60 percent public and 40 percent private), 8,000 publication names and 46,000 related and secondary terms. SmartTerms are available for searching in the 8,000 news sources and 201,000 market research reports accessible via the enhanced Dialog NewsRoom and Dialog Profound services.

Leveraging Leading Edge Technology

Leveraging a breadth of leading edge technology resources, SmartTerms employs the best of the Dialog Profound InfoSort taxonomy and the Dialog NewsEdge Real-time Content Refinery (RtCR), which incorporates a unique understanding of topics and industry terms. The RtCR is a background information classification, tagging and XML conversion system that analyzes, filters and sorts content to optimize delivery to subscribers.

SmartTerms also incorporates Thomson Financial’s company authority file, used in its core financial products, for categorizing and matching company names. In addition, Dialog partners with Stratify, an emerging leader in unstructured data management, and utilizes its Discovery System to create and maintain the multi-faceted taxonomy.

“The technology employed in SmartTerms has many layers and facets,” explains Lathrop. “In the end, the outcome is relevant results with pinpoint accuracy produced for our customers, which means they don’t miss important documents and don’t have to sift through irrelevant information.”

Ensuring Accurate, Relevant Results

SmartTerms’ granularity helps Dialog searchers retrieve relevant articles and documents that significantly discuss a topic. Without SmartTerms, for example, a search initiated using the word export might retrieve thousands of irrelevant articles about computer data extraction or articles that merely mention a product being shipped to another country. With SmartTerms, a search using export would generate results with articles and reports focused on the topic of selling products abroad.

SmartTerms also gives Dialog subscribers greater flexibility in creating searches using abbreviations, related terms, slang and colloquialisms in their searches. For example, a SmartTerms search for articles and reports about HP would yield results for Hewlett Packard. A SmartTerms search for Big Blue will retrieve articles about IBM.

Pointer Terms, another feature of SmartTerms, automatically direct a researcher to other relevant terms. For example, a SmartTerms search using the phrase 9/11 or 9-11 would automatically be pointed to the documents about international terrorism.

SmartTerms also includes Related Terms that help a user refine or expand a search. For example, a SmartTerms search on Electronic Funds Transfer would return relevant documents and also suggest several other SmartTerms, such as ATMs & Networks and Online Banking.

The Dialog ontology staff continues to add new terms and refine existing terms to reflect current events and evolving business research needs.

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About Dialog and The Thomson Corporation
Dialog, a pioneer in developing the technology behind electronic information retrieval, is the world leader in providing online-based information services to organizations seeking competitive advantages in such fields as business, science, engineering, finance and law.

Today, the online services provided by Dialog — offered through the Dialog®, Dialog Profound®, Dialog DataStar™, NewsEdge and Intelligence Data brands — give users the ability to precisely retrieve data from more than 1.4 billion unique records, accessible via the Internet or through delivery to enterprise intranets. Searchable content includes articles and reports from thousands of real-time news feeds, newspapers, broadcast transcripts and trade publications, plus research reports and analyst notes providing support for financial decision-making, as well as in-depth repositories of scientific and technical data, patents, trademarks and other intellectual property data. Information professionals and end-users at business, professional and government organizations in more than 100 countries prize Dialog services for their depth and breadth of content, precision searching and speed.

Based in Cary, N.C., USA, Dialog has operations in 31 other countries. Dialog (www.dialog.com) is a business of The Thomson Corporation (NYSE: TOC; TSX: TOC). With 2003 revenues of US$7.6 billion, Thomson (www.thomson.com) is a global leader in providing integrated information solutions to business and professional customers.

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All designated trademarks used herein are the property of The Dialog Corporation or its subsidiaries. Registered marks are registered by The Dialog Corporation or its subsidiaries with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. All other marks are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

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