WebSiteStory Search 4.0 sounds like a interesting product suite based on the press release on their website.

The new capabilities with Search 4.0 include:

• Active Ranking – An industry-first capability that enables marketers to automatically influence and optimize site search relevancy – the ability to provide visitors exactly what they are looking for – based on the full spectrum of web site behavioral data, from e-commerce metrics to content and traffic information. This patent-pending technology enables marketers to deliver better search results and dramatically increase ROI. Marketers can also upload other data to include data such as profitability and user ratings. Active Ranking is an extended service.

Does that mean WebSiteStory is going to be the search engine (sorta like InQuira - If i recall correctly) and decide what data on the site is relevent and create a document with the data if none exists?

Active Navigation –Active Navigation provides a guided experience that optimally leads customers to products or data they seek. Using site search to power the site navigation enables visitors to narrow their choices much more easily, while reducing the amount of maintenance and support required by the web team. Active Navigation can also take advantage of Active Ranking to automate the integration of web analytics data into the visitor navigation experience. Active Navigation is an extended service.

WebsideStory will ask the visitor what they’re interested in to narrow down the query.

Large Capacity Search – Search 4.0 includes an architecture that boosts its search capacity by more than 10 times, making it capable of handling millions of indexed pages. The product also includes increased redundancy across its network, meaning nearly 100 percent availability for customers.

OK, this means they are acting as a search engine - and I guess, also collecting data for analytics.

Stream Shopping Engine Feeds – Using Search 4.0, e-commerce customers can automate their submissions to shopping search engines without having to engage the IT department. Bloomingdales.com is currently taking advantage of this capability to extend its product catalog into Google and its shopping engine, Froogle.

Stream SEO Sitemap Feeds – Customers of all business models can leverage the product to automatically generate feeds for Google Sitemaps. This ensures that Google always has the most current information about your site, based on the priorities customers assign.

Sounds like WebSideStory Search 4.0 wants to create a seamless way to stream your data into shopping search engines without having to actually create a feed (let the search engine do it for you).

Sounds like an interesting offering - like to see it in action.