FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Northern Gardeners And Landscapers No Longer Using The Major Search Engines?

January 31, 2006 -- Move over Google and Yahoo, because a new search technology is changing the way that northern gardeners and landscapers obtain their information online!

With the proliferation of obscure gardening and landscaping information now cluttering the major internet search engines, it has become nearly impossible for northern homeowners and gardeners to find information that is applicable to their unique climatic conditions. Now northerners are getting the relevant information they need to create and maintain beautiful and functional yards and gardens in the challenging northern climate with the simple click of a button. It’s called the "Info Zone", and it’s a searchable database of hundreds of informational articles written specifically by northern horticultural and landscaping experts.

The Info Zone is a brand new feature on Northscaping (www.northscaping.com), the leading internet resource for northern landscapers and gardeners. This powerful tool enables users to search through hundreds of gardening and landscaping Info Sheets, Fact Sheets and Tip Sheets, along with other articles written by the horticultural experts at Northscaping and selected guest writers, simply by entering key search words or phrases.

At the heart of this tool is an innovative new search technology specially developed by the web techies at Northscaping. Unlike popular search engines such as Google and Yahoo, this technology conducts extensive searches through Northscaping's own pool of articles, which have all been pre-screened for their relevance and applicability to northern gardeners and home landscapers. Results are prioritized by their relevance to the keywords, and are presented in a format that makes it easy to find the right information, with a synopsis and a photograph accompanying every article.

The Info Zone replaces the “e-Zine”, Northscaping’s popular weekly online magazine. "It was getting to the point where there was just too much information, too many articles in the e-Zine for users to find what they were looking for, much like with today's search engines," says Jim Kohut, President and a founding partner of Northscaping. "We knew we had to develop a new approach to presenting information, a way that would leverage the interactivity of the internet to give our users access to the information they need when they need it."

Kohut believes that focused search technologies such as the Northscaping Info Zone will change the way people acquire information on the internet, eventually replacing the generic search engines in their respective fields of expertise. "People will only use the big engines to first identify relevant resources such as Northscaping, but will then return again and again to the Info Zone for all of their subsequent landscaping and gardening information. This trend has already emerged in other segments of the internet, and we're the first to offer it to northern gardeners and landscapers."

The Info Zone is surprisingly simple to use. If a user wants to know how to start seeds indoors in the shorter growing seasons of the North, they simply enter "starting seeds in the North" in the search box. With a click of a button, the result is a series of articles relevant to the topic, and most importantly, relevant to northern climates. Likewise, if they want to know how to prepare their yards for winter, they could enter "preparing my yard for winter", and "planting annuals in spring" if they wanted to learn the proper techniques for spring planting in the North.

And best of all, users don't have to scour through pages of irrelevant links to find what they're looking for. "The new Info Zone is evidence of our ongoing commitment to northern landscapers and gardeners," adds Kohut. "We have promised to be their primary source for landscaping and gardening information on the internet, and we are delivering on this promise by introducing powerful and focused tools such as the Info Zone and our extremely popular Landscape Plant Search."

And for those thousands of northerners who had come to enjoy the new articles each week in the e-Zine, they need not worry. Fresh and timely articles are still being added to the Info Zone each week, continually expanding the database with relevant information which is always accessible through the search. Users can even subscribe to an automatic notification service which will notify them when new articles are added. And as with all the tools on Northscaping, the Info Zone is offered free to users, with no subscriptions or memberships required.

Northscaping (www.northscaping.com) is the leading internet resource and community for landscapers and gardeners living in northern North America (hardiness zones 1-5). Its mission is to empower homeowners living with the challenges of a cold northern climate to transform their yards and gardens to make them more beautiful and functional. The website features a powerful set of gardening and landscaping tools, a searchable information database, community discussion forums and links to other on-line resources of value to northern landscapers and gardeners. The Info Zone can be found at: www.northscaping.com/InfoZone/InfoZone.asp.

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