iWon Strengthens Search Technology Launching New Products from Inktomi and Fact City
(Irvington, NY, March 19, 2001) – iWon, (www.iwon.com), the Internet’s leading loyalty-based portal, today announced that it is further enhancing its award-winning Internet search capabilities by launching the next generation of Inktomi® Search/Web and adding new content to iWon’s Fact Finder powered by Fact City.
iWon’s unique search strategy is to partner with best-of-breed Internet search, technology and content providers in order to create a robust, accurate and relevant search service.
Inktomi - Next Generation Search Software improves iWon’s relevance and bottom line
With the launch of the new Inktomi Search/Web platform today, Inktomi Corp. (NASDAQ:INKT), developer of scalable Internet infrastructure software, is supplying iWon with the most advanced search technology to provide its users with enhanced relevancy, easier access to the most accurate search results and a more expansive Web index that includes hard to crawl content such as XML or dynamic content. Inktomi Search/Web now incorporates advanced relevancy modeling based on a new methodology for the ongoing development of classification and ranking techniques, content blending technology that combines query results from disparate databases and serves the most relevant results up front, and content discovery technology which includes Inktomi’s new distributed crawling architecture that scans the Web more frequently, revisiting missed content and refreshing updated pages.
Additionally, iWon is a member of the Inktomi Index Connect content inclusion network, which delivers relevant, timely, and quality content to its users while generating incremental revenue for iWon. The Index Connect service provides content publishers with greater reach and more accurate representation in the Inktomi index, while improving the overall quality and scope of information available to Internet users.
Fact City – New content for the iWon Fact Finder
A valuable partner, Fact City is the first facts-on-demand search solution. The Fact Finder enhances iWon’s content by providing users with rich information that is easily accessible. Fact Finder includes invaluable data compiled from the SEC filings of more than 12,000 public companies both foreign and in the United States; weather conditions for close to 500 cities worldwide; NASCAR Winston Cup race series from 1996-2000; Periodic Table of Elements and physical geographic features of the world.
“We are pleased to have partnered with leading providers that continuously assist us in improving our search technology,” said Jonas Steinman, iWon’s Co-Founder and CEO. “iWon delivers high quality and wide-ranging search results from across the Internet by working closely with our partners who continue to provide innovative solutions and award-winning techniques to our many users.”
About iWon
Launched in October 1999, iWon is the 5th most trafficked site on the Internet (Nielsen//NetRatings, January 2001). iWon also ranks as the most loyal portal on the Web, placing #1 for average days, pages and minutes spent per visitor (Media Metrix, January 2001). In its first year, iWon was recognized as a BrandWeek Marketer of the Next Generation; was voted #1 in user site and feature satisfaction (NPD Search and Portal Tracking Study, June 2000); and was named one of the best “dot-com ideas for 2000” by the Associated Press. Ranked #1 in Advanced Search on the Internet (Search Engine Showdown, July 2000), iWon provides world-class search and content from leading partners such as Associated Press, CBS, Inktomi, Standard & Poor’s Comstock, Reuters, TheStreet.com, Travelocity, and WeatherNews Inc.
As an added incentive, iWon gives away $10,000 every day, 30 prizes of $1,000 every week, $1 million every month and $10 million on Tax Day. By simply using the site to search the Web, check email, go shopping, read the news, or perform other regular Internet activities, iWon users earn entries into the daily, weekly, monthly and annual giveaways. In addition, iWon Cash Points, like iWon entries, are accumulated for virtually everything users do on the site. Users can apply iWon Cash Points toward deep discounts in the iWon Rewards Store. To date, iWon has selected more than 160,000 winners and has given away more than $34 million in cash prizes.
About Inktomi Search Solutions
Inktomi Search Solutions, which has received broad acclaim for delivering comprehensive and highly accurate Web search results, powers many of the largest Internet portals and destination sites worldwide, as well as some of the largest, most demanding enterprise intranets. Inktomi provides a full range of search services and products from turnkey, hosted solutions to licensed software packages enabling customers to change their business model for providing search without having to change search engines. Inktomi Search Solutions also offers technology for building and maintaining topic hierarchies seamlessly integrated with search functionality, empowering Internet portals, destination sites and enterprises alike to provide their users with a highly efficient and satisfying way to find information.
About Fact City
Founded in 1999, Fact City is the only end-to-end database publishing solution for Internet portals and Web-based enterprise applications. Internet portals like Lycos.com, iWon.com, ESPN.com, FOXSports.com and Disney's Movies.com use the company's scalable services to enhance their sites with previously unavailable database content, and to boost revenue through increased traffic, improved ad targeting and expanded e-commerce opportunities. Fact City also powers data distribution solutions for Thomson Financial, News Digital Media, BPI Communications and Houghton-Mifflin. Fact City is headquartered in Waltham, Mass. and maintains European headquarters in the Netherlands. For more information, go to www.factcity.com.
Fact City and the Fact City logo are trademarks of Fact City, Inc. Other company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of the individual companies and are respectfully acknowledged.
All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
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