January 2010 - Funnelback Version 9 Released – Includes New Reporting System, Pattern Detection and Numerous Feature Improvements

Funnelback has announced the release of version 9 of its search engine software. Funnelback 9 includes new features and functionality improvements which enhance the performance and usability of its Internet and Enterprise search solutions, and enable organisations to use pattern based strategy to expose search query trends which could impact their business.

The Reports Dashboard, accessible via Funnelback’s Administration interface, offers a selection of new reports to monitor trends in queries, user behaviour and search results. Reports available include popular queries, top searches by location, query trends over time and click behaviour. These reports can be easily exported into various formats and subscriptions can be set up to automatically email reports to administrators.

The new Pattern Detection and Alerting system provides close to real time business intelligence on the topics that are currently of most interest to users. The system automatically groups related search queries and monitors the number of queries for each group. Pattern changes are detected and reported alongside information on dates, locations and related news stories; providing information on the probable reasons which caused the spike to occur and insight into patterns and events which may have positive, or negative, impact. This valuable intelligence can then be used by businesses to more quickly and effectively adapt to threats and opportunities.

Many improvements have also been made to the end-user interface, including:

Faster Contextual Navigation – Contextual Navigation presents a navigational list relative to the context of the search query, allowing users to drill down into more refined content. Funnelback 9 has dramatically increased the speed of this process, resulting in a fast response time for the generation of contextual navigation.

Improved Spelling Suggestions – The system can make suggestions even if all words are correctly spelled, can make suggestions in multi-lingual environments, will not make suggestions which do not have any search results and learns and improves according to user behaviour.

Near-Duplicate Detection – Pushes highly similar results down in the rankings.

David Hawking, Chief Scientist of Funnelback, said, "The new pattern detection functionality is a significant step forwards for Funnelback as it allows the power of our search technology to be harnessed in new, informative, ways. We are committed to continuously improving Funnelback according to business requirements and we’re excited to be able to release this new version for the benefit of our clients."