Convera(R) Powers Publishers to Manage and Refine Vertical Search Engines

VIENNA, Va., Feb. 20 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Convera Corporation (NASDAQ: CNVR) , http://www.convera.com/, a leading provider of search technologies for publishers, today launched the beta phase of Convera Publisher Control Panel. The new service enables print and online publishers to add, manage and refine vertical search capabilities so they can develop search-based revenues for their Web sites. Convera Publisher Control Panel is available for customers of Convera's hosted vertical search service that provides a customized search engine for content publishers serving professional markets.

As publishers expand their brands online, they are faced with several critical challenges. They must create and maintain loyal online communities, deliver a highly qualified audience to advertisers and provide access to industry relevant information, including their own content and highly relevant open source information on the Web.

With the Convera Publisher Control Panel, publishers can directly manage and improve the search experience for their professional communities and leverage vertical search as a critical hub to develop online communities and build advertising relationships. The solution's features include:

  --  Whitelist management: Creating an exhaustive whitelist of relevant
      search destinations from open source and user generated content is
      essential to providing professionals with the content they seek. With
      Convera Publisher Control Panel, publishers can apply their industry
      and editorial expertise to define a list of relevant sites to improve
      the relevancy of search results. Convera also provides publishers with
      appropriate whitelists based on exhaustive industry specific
      taxonomies.

  --  Indexing proprietary content: Publishers can manage the indexing of
      their own content and provide highly refined search access to it.

  --  Relevancy tools: Publishers can rank Web sites to refine the relevancy
      of search results and determine the depth and frequency at which
      specific Web sites can be crawled.

  --  Measurement reports: Through crawl and traffic reports, publishers can
      continually monitor the relevance of specific Web content and refine
      search capabilities based on actual search usage.

Coming features will offer publishers the ability to easily manage site advertising; the capability to boost the ranking of the content based on time, popularity, authority and the relevance of individual sites; site and search analytics tools; and the capability to customize the look and feel of the user interface to best fit the needs of the online communities they serve.

"Publishers understand the complexities of their industry and the unique needs of those they serve," said Patrick Condo, Convera's chief executive officer. "With our Publisher Control Panel, they can apply their rich industry experience to improve the search experience for their online communities and heighten advertising relevancy. We're giving publishers the control they need to remain leaders of the professional communities they serve."

Convera Publishing Control Panel is a feature of the company's vertical search service for publishers. Through the service, Convera develops vertical search solutions that cover an unlimited number of professions and industries. The hosted service provides publishers with control of advertising relationships and editorial oversight. Based on a low risk, hosted service model, vertical search implementations can be up and running in weeks.

About Convera(R)

Convera(R) is a leading provider of search technologies for professional workers. Convera has developed a unified product platform that makes sense of vast amounts of information -- wherever it resides -- across multiple data formats, languages and meanings. Based on proprietary technologies that extract relevant results from public and private data, Convera enables professionals to quickly retrieve exactly the information essential for action. The Convera search platform is delivered as a hosted service, software or a bundled hardware and software package. Thousands of government and business professionals in 40 countries rely on Convera search solutions to power a broad range of mission critical applications.

This release, including any statements from Convera personnel, contains statements about Convera's future expectations, performance, plans, and prospects, as well as assumptions about future events. The reader is cautioned not to put undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, as these statements are subject to numerous factors and uncertainties, including without limitation, business and economic conditions and trends; the ability to continue funding operating losses; fluctuations in operating results including impacts from reduced corporate IT spending and lengthier sales cycles; continued success in technological advances and development including the TrueKnowledge Platform (TM); possible disruption in commercial activities caused by terrorist activity and armed conflict, such as changes in logistics and security arrangements; reduced customer demand relative to expectations; competitive factors; and other risk factors listed from time to time in the company's reports to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Actual results may differ materially from our expectations as the result of these and other important factors relating to Convera's business and product development efforts, which are further described in Convera's filings with the SEC. These filings can be obtained from the SEC's website located at http://www.sec.gov/. Any forward-looking statements are based on information available to Convera on the date of this release, and Convera assumes no obligation to update such statements. "The Convera design logo and the following are trademarks of Convera in the United States and other countries: Convera(R), the Convera design logo, Screening Room(R), RetrievalWare(R), Excalibur(TM), Govmine(TM), baseRelevance(TM), TrueKnowledge Platform(TM), TrueB2B(TM), TrueKnowledge for Enterprise(TM), TrueKnowledge for Discovery(TM), TrueKnowledge for Web(TM), and Knewworld(TM)."