FusionBot allows you to directly modify the URLs as indexed on your site, by passing in special hidden fields as part of your search box.

This can be useful, for example, if your site requires the maintenance of a unique session ID or session state, typically achieved through the setting of a cookie on your visitor's machine, you will first need to instruct the FusionBot spider to accept cookies while crawling your site. To do so, login to your account, click on the "Spider" tab, and under the "Index Options" section, click the link labeled "Enable Cookies Support", and select "Yes". The default setting is for the FusionBot crawler to NOT accept cookies from your site.

If your site, as a result of this type of server configuration also carries forward a unique visitor ID, typically called a session ID, from page to page, you may need to replace or remove the unique ID assigned to the FusionBot crawler, which is carried forward from page to page, with the unique ID assigned to your visitors upon entry to your site. Otherwise, after a visitor conducts a search on your site using FusionBot, the search results page will contain links back to your site with the session ID assigned to FusionBot during its crawl versus your actual visitor's ID, creating a server conflict. This is very typical for sites with shopping carts that must uniquely identify a visitor as they travel throughout the site.

For example, when FusionBot crawls your site, a session ID with the variable name "visitor" may be set to a value of "123456", resulting in the creation of links to content throughout your site similar to the following:

https://www.yoursite.com/product.asp?cat=furniture&visitor=123456
https://www.yoursite.com/detail.asp?view=yes&visitor=123456&pos=2

However, when a visitor enters your site, they will be assigned a different unique visitor ID than that assigned and maintained by the FusionBot crawler. When this visitor uses FusionBot to search your site, and either of the two sample pages above are returned in your search result, these pages will link back to your site with the "visitor" id value of "123456", creating a conflict and causing your visitor's session to be lost.

This issue can be alleviated by instructing the FusionBot search results process to either completely strip / truncate a particular variable or variables and their values out of your page names / URLs in the search results, or dynamically replace the value of the variable (in this case visitor), with the value assigned to your actual visitor. You can accomplish either of these tasks by dynamically passing the desired value of your variable to FusionBot within a hidden field in your search form constructed as follows:

<input type="hidden" name="ses_Variable_Name" value="Variable_Value">

Where Variable_Name is equal to the name of the variable within your URL you wish to remove and/or replace the value of, and Variable_Value equals the actual value that the URLs in your search results should contain.

The difference between instructing FusionBot to remove or replace the variable and/or its value depends on how you construct the hidden field in your FusionBot form code. To remove the variable and its value, simply apply a null value to the hidden field passed, to replace the value of a specific variable, set the value of the hidden field to your desired replacement value, i.e. your current visitor's session ID. For example, to change the value of the "visitor" variable in your URLs as described previously from 123456 to 555555, dynamically add the following line to your FusionBot search box code:

<!-- Begin FusionBot.com site search engine code -->
<FORM NAME=fbsearch METHOD=GET ACTION="https://ss.fusionbot.com/cgi-bin/ss_query">
<DIV align=left><FONT size=2 face=arial>Search:</FONT><BR>
<INPUT TYPE=text NAME=keys SIZE=15>
<INPUT TYPE=hidden NAME=sitenbr VALUE="1111111">
<INPUT TYPE=submit VALUE="GO">
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" name="ses_visitor" value="555555">
</DIV>
</FORM>
<!-- End FusionBot.com site search engine code -->

This will cause any links displayed as part of your search results that previously had the value of the variable "visitor" equal to "123456", or any other value for that matter, to now contain the value passed in the hidden field:

https://www.yoursite.com/product.asp?cat=furniture&visitor=555555
https://www.yoursite.com/detail.asp?view=yes&visitor=555555&pos=2

As shown in the search code sample above, the hidden field or fields entered MUST begin with ses_, followed by whatever actual variable name contained within your URLs you wish to replace. Also, the variable names you assign your hidden fields are case sensitive and must match EXACTLY as they appear in the URL in order for the replacement to occur.

To completely remove the variable all together, which is especially useful if your web server will auto-insert this value for you, simply leave the "value=" attribute of the hidden field empty:

<!-- Begin FusionBot.com site search engine code -->
<FORM NAME=fbsearch METHOD=GET ACTION="https://ss.fusionbot.com/cgi-bin/ss_query">
<DIV align=left><FONT size=2 face=arial>Search:</FONT><BR>
<INPUT TYPE=text NAME=keys SIZE=15>
<INPUT TYPE=hidden NAME=sitenbr VALUE="1111111">
<INPUT TYPE=submit VALUE="GO">
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" name="ses_visitor" value="">
</DIV>
</FORM>
<!-- End FusionBot.com site search engine code -->

This sample will result in the removal of the variable named "visitor" and its value from the page names / URLs in the search results all together:

https://www.yoursite.com/product.asp?cat=furniture
https://www.yoursite.com/detail.asp?view=yes&pos=2

It is important to dynamically insert this syntax anywhere throughout your site where you have inserted the FusionBot search box code, including modifying any links to either your FusionBot generated sitemap or search tips pages to include these variables as part of the querystring.

The examples above allow for the GLOBAL replacement or removal of session variables from any querystring for any page that is part of your search results. There may be times, however, when using a custom search region / partition that you may wish to replace the value of a certain querystring with variable, with a specific value, when one search partition is selected by your visitor, but with a different value, when an alternate search partition is selected / searched by your visitors.

To specify an alternate variable replacement value for a specific search region, you can include a LOCAL session value hidden field replacement, by modifying your hidden field form code to include a region value identifier. To determine the region value identifier for the specific region in which you wish to set a value for, analyze your FusionBot search box HTML code, looking for the SELECT field named "related". Contained between the open SELECT tag (<SELECT>), and the closed SELECT tag (</SELECT>), will be each of your region options and their associated values. For example, the FusionBot search box code on this site has 2 regions, "ALL of FusionBot", and "FAQs Only", and the search box code is constructed as follows:

<select NAME="related" size="1">
  <option VALUE="0">All of FusionBot</option>
  <option VALUE="1"FAQs Only</option>
</select>

As you can see, region values are assigned starting with 0. Therefore, the region "FAQs Only has a value assigned of 1, and if I want to replace or remove a specific querystring variable, named visitor, ONLY when the "FAQs Only" region is searched, I would include a hidden field as part of my search box code as follows:

<INPUT TYPE="hidden" name="ses_1_visitor" value="555555">

Notice the inclusion / modification of the GLOBAL variable replacement function by including the "_1" indicator after the ses_ indicator. This instructs FusionBot to use the specific value assigned in the hidden field ONLY when region 1 is searched.

You can include a combination of GLOBAL and LOCAL variable replacement hidden fields for the same variable name. The LOCAL value will always take precedence over the GLOBAL value. In this manner, when you have multiple search regions, and want the querystring variable to replaced with a specific value in all but one instance, you only need to include 2 hidden fields, one GLOBAL and one LOCAL:

<INPUT TYPE="hidden" name="ses_visitor" value="555555">
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" name="ses_1_visitor" value="111111">

In the sample above, when ANY region is searched EXCEPT region 1, the visitor variable will be assigned the value 555555. When region 1 is searched, the variable visitor will be assigned the value 111111.

Lastly, there may also be times where you wish to insert a brand new querystring all together, rather than replace the value of, or remove a variable all together. If you wish to insert a new querystring name / value pair into each indexed URL of your site, utilize the same syntax as described above, however, for the value attribute of the hidden field for the variable to insert, append a plus sign (+), instructing FusionBot that the referenced variable is being added / inserted, rather than replaced or deleted:

<INPUT TYPE="hidden" name="ses_campaignID" value="+6789">