NexTag Named To Red Herring Top 100 Private Companies List for Second Straight Year

Award Recognizes 100 Private Companies in North America That Drive the Technology Industry's Future

San Mateo, Calif. (May 11, 2005)
NexTag®, the leading comparison shopping website for products and services, today announced that it has been named one of the Red Herring 100 Private Companies of North America for the second year in a row.

"We are proud to once again be recognized as one of the top private companies by Red Herring, and look forward to continuing the successful track record we've established over the past four years," said Purnendu Ojha, CEO and co-founder of NexTag. "Our history of profitability is even more impressive when you consider the company's rapid growth over the past two years, during which we've expanded internationally and more than doubled our breadth of category coverage."

"Five years after the dot-com bubble burst, innovation and entrepreneurship are thriving. The companies on this list are proof," said Red Herring editor-in-chief Joel Dreyfuss. The first quarter of 2005 marked the fourteenth consecutive profitable quarter for NexTag. The company attributed much of its continued success to increases in the number of categories covered by its comparison shopping engine and growth in its customer base. For the past twelve months, "category coverage," the range of products and services available via the NexTag website, is up 105 percent, thanks largely to the addition of Services Shopping. Services Shopping enables visitors to the NexTag website to compare pricing and feature sets for services including financial services, travel, automobiles, real estate, education and more. Based on NexTag's analysis of data from the U.S. Census Bureau and U.S. Department of Labor, the company provides comparison shopping search coverage for 62 percent of the average U.S. consumers' annual expenditures by category – significantly more than any other comparison shopping website.

NexTag's merchant network (online retailers and service providers) grew substantially over the past year, and NexTag has become one of the top twenty sources of online leads for dozens of major retailers including Amazon.com, Buy.com, Circuit City, Dell, JC Penney, Neiman Marcus and Overstock.com¹. Over the past three years, site traffic to NexTag.com has grown by more than 700%² and in March 2005 NexTag became one of the ten largest e-commerce sites on the Web³.

About Red Herring Spring

Red Herring Spring is an invitation-only event for CEOs, select senior executives, and Venture Capitalists. Themed 'The Dynamics of Disruptions', Red Herring Spring 2005 will bring together executives from mostly private companies. These executives will be joined by senior executives from public companies and Venture Capitalists. Please contact Sean Raman at 650.428.2900 or email sraman@redherring.com if you would like to request an invitation to Red Herring Spring.

About Red Herring

Red Herring is the weekly magazine technology entrepreneurs, investors and industry observers read to stay ahead of the curve and to be better informed about the global marketplace. Red Herring covers technology, innovation, financial strategies, important personalities and trends that are transforming the world of business with unique insight, opinion and forward-looking analysis. Readers turn to Red Herring for knowledge to make strategic decisions, build companies and create a competitive advantage for their businesses. Red Herring articles, blogs, research and event information can be found online at www.redherring.com.

About NexTag, Inc.

NexTag.com is the leading comparison shopping site for products, financial services, travel, automobiles, real estate, education and more. The company's proprietary Search And Match technology (SAM) helps shoppers quickly compare prices for products and services. NexTag's highly qualified traffic and performance-based pricing makes it an extremely efficient sales channel for thousands of retailers, service providers and individuals. Launched in 1999, NexTag is a privately held company based in San Mateo, California. For more information, go to www.nextag.com.

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¹Source: Hitwise, February 2005
²Source: Nielsen//NetRatings monthly reports, March 2002 to March 2005
³Source: Nielsen//NetRatings 3/05

NexTag is a registered trademark of NexTag, Inc. All other names are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective owners.