FusionBot v2.0 Offers Intra-Site and Topic Specific Search Engine Capabilities; Hosted Search Utility Also Rewards Referrals Through Affiliate Program

Business Wire,  Nov 9, 2000  

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Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

DALLAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 9, 2000

Logika Corporation, a leader in improving Internet-based information searches, today unveiled FusionBot version 2.0, expanding its site-specific search capabilities with topic-specific "mini-search portals." In addition, customers can earn monthly recurring revenue through FusionBot's new affiliate program. Logika introduced its new version of FusionBot at the Search Engine Strategies 2000 conference.

"FusionBot offers the most seamless hosted solution for intra-site search functionality and back-end customer activity reporting that's ever been available to the small e-business owner for a reasonable price," said Matt Fordham, CEO for Logika Corporation. "We've already enabled small businesses to correct organizational problems and better connect their customers with the products they seek, but we weren't happy with that alone. We saw additional benefits that we could build into the service and made FusionBot even more conducive to helping small businesses operate successfully on the Internet, for e-commerce and information-based sites."

The additional benefits contained in version 2.0 allow customers to build topic-specific search engines and encourage referrals through a monthly recurring revenue-based affiliate program.

Mini-Search Portals Capture Communal Attention

"Allowing FusionBot customers to build a topic-specific `mini-search portal' was a very logical step for the FusionBot product family," said Fordham. "At one end of the FusionBot product family continuum is a free-of-charge intra-site search utility; search portals are the other extreme of the FusionBot family."

Search portals are topic-specific search engines built by utilizing advanced content categorization algorithms. This process is used to build a comprehensive index of relevant searchable information targeted towards vertical portals and other community-of-interest sites. Search portals are a perfect solution when the task of building a collection of known sites pertinent to a topic becomes too overwhelming or cost prohibitive for the customer to handle. While these are very affordable for vertical portals and other community-of-interest sites, they may be beyond what most small businesses are willing to spend. FusionBot now gives them the ability to position themselves as experts by delivering pertinent search results to their visitors as well.

In introducing FusionBot 2.0, Logika established Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum level subscriptions for the service, providing increasingly comprehensive search indexes through which users can search for topic-specific information. Bronze, Silver and Gold FusionBot subscriptions all function as mini-search portals, with indexes containing anywhere from 500 to 5,000 pages. The Platinum subscription is a full-blown search portal, an automated and comprehensive index of information on the Web pertaining to a specific topic from which visitors receive pertinent search results.

With FusionBot's `mini-search portal' function, the customer provides the URLs of the sites to be indexed. FusionBot then indexes these sites for inclusion in the mini-search portal search index. Essentially, this delivers the same type of pertinent results as the search portals, assuming that the client selects appropriate URLs to include in the mini-portal index.

Affiliating with Monthly Recurring Revenue

Another improvement that Logika built into the second version of FusionBot was a monthly recurring revenue-based affiliate program.

Customers need only to fill out a short form on the FusionBot site to participate in the program, and all customers that are referred through links off of the utility or additional banner ads belong to the referring site. Whether the new customer immediately signs up for a paid service or tries the free service and upgrades to the paid service later, that new customer belongs to the referring site for the length of their relationship with FusionBot.

A customer that refers 100 bronze package customers at $20 / month each would get a 15 percent commission each month, totaling $300. Commission percentages are based on referred revenue and can rise as high as 40 percent.

"It makes a lot of sense for us to reward our customers for spreading the word about FusionBot," said Fordham. "There's no denying that the best way to sell someone on the benefits of FusionBot is to show them how it works. We've essentially turned our customer base into a pool of customer referrals, and we expect this to benefit FusionBot as well as the customers that participate."

To learn more about FusionBot, visit http://www.fusionbot.com.

About Logika Corporation

Logika Corporation, a Chicago-based leader in next generation Internet search solutions, provides today's most innovative search tool kit available for license and use on the Web. Products powered by Logika enable Web sites to better attract and retain the traffic they need to succeed or offer innovative searching capabilities to help users navigate the Web. Logika's innovative business model is based on extensive custom-developed technology and includes a variety of revenue streams. Logika's suite of products includes FusionBot, for building single site and custom vertical search solutions; First-Search.com, the Web at a glance; and Namedroppers.com - the Web's premier domain name search engine.