NexTag Named to the Red Herring 100 Top Private Companies List

Latest achievement comes on the heels of record number of unique visitors and tenth straight quarter of profitability.

San Mateo, CA (May 17, 2004)
NexTag®, a leading online comparison shopping service, today announced it has been named to Red Herring's annual list of the Top 100 private companies. After reviewing business models, financial results, and the management teams of more than 500 companies, Red Herring selected NexTag as one of the best-performing private companies that have had a positive impact on the marketplace. This prestigious accolade comes at a time when NexTag has been achieving solid growth metrics in terms of profitability and record high traffic. During the month of March 2004, traffic to the NexTag Web site reached a record high of 8.7 million unique visitors(1) - an increase of 194 percent over the previous year.

"To be recognized as one of the top 100 private companies by Red Herring is a great endorsement of how well we are executing against our business model." said Purnendu Ojha, CEO and co-founder of NexTag. "We are focused on achieving sustained growth throughout 2004 and on establishing ourselves as the #1 site for consumers to intelligently shop for products and services."

"At the Red Herring, we scour the industry to identify the best and brightest technology companies that are transforming the current markets and creating new ones," said Alex Vieux, publisher of Red Herring. "The Red Herring 100 is our annual list of the most promising private companies. Like Google, eBay, Salesforce.com, and other previous Red Herring 100 alumni, these 100 have the potential to become the next titans of technology."

In choosing companies for the Red Herring 100, editors used both qualitative measurements and quantitative business metrics to highlight companies. This year´s selection process was weighted to reflect the reality of survival in today's challenging marketplace: generating revenues, establishing a strong customer base and equally strong industry partnerships. NexTag has grown rapidly across these three areas. The company has been profitable for ten straight quarters, has moved from the #5 to #2 industry player in 12 months in terms of unique visitors and has increased the number of merchant partners to more than 3,000.

About NexTag NexTag, The Search Engine for Shoppers (SM), is the fastest way to compare prices online. The company's unique technology, including fast and relevant product search results, TruePrice, and product price histories, enables shoppers to quickly compare prices of millions of products from thousands of online stores. NexTag's highly qualified traffic and performance-based pricing makes it an extremely efficient sales channel for retailers, manufacturers and individuals. Launched in 1999 by two Stanford graduates, Purnendu Ojha and Rafael Ortiz, NexTag is a privately held company based in San Mateo, California. For more information, go to www.nextag.com.

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NexTag Media Contact:
'pr' at nextag.com

NexTag is a trademark and "The Search Engine for Shoppers" is a service mark of NexTag, Inc. All other names are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective owners.