We are uploading for our readers chapter extracted from an conference of the 2007 Online Information Show. The last chapter is here : How Web 3.0 new search services help information professionals mining the web for valuable open access information ?

Web 3.0 Search Services : from open access information to business quality content

Vertical search engines also appear in the information industry. Using free content, they are modifying the competitive landscape. Two examples are presented hereafter :

  1. Reportlinker.com : this search engine launched in the beginning of 2007 gather public domain industry reports published by 200 000 sources
  2. Zoominfo : launched in its new version in 2006, Zoominfo use information published in press release and “born on the web” content (ex : blog) to create company and executives profiles

Search for open access industry report : Reportlinker.com

What is Reportlinker ?

Reportlinker.com is a vertical search engine dedicated to public domain industry information.

1,2 Million of public documents such as annual reports or industry statistics and market reports are centralized from 200 000 sources selected for their Industry experience (governments, embassies, trade unions…).

How does it work ?

Reportlinker.com is working as a general search engine, but choose to crawl selected sources instead of trying to get most of them. Each document identified is analyzed through a in house semantic technology, through three steps :

  1. the first one will rate the document on three dimensions : Industry, Geographic and Business (marketing, finance….)
  2. the second will extract industry specific concept, as company names
  3. a last treatment is applied in order to extract the document meta data : publication date, title….;

Business Model

Reportlinker is a subscription based search engine (daily or monthly access).

Example of search on Automotive Industry

1st step : Type “Passenger Cars” in the search engine box

figure 8

2nd step : Refine the search thanks to industry filters

1/ Among automatic filters (on the left), three of them can be interesting : - Industries filter o Cars, that we will choose to refine here - Locations filter o We will reduce our search to Western Europe - Dates filter o We will choose to get all reports published from 2006

Figure 9

2/ When we look at the refined results list, the third and forth results are report on passengers cars in Europe. We download the first one, get a report from the CCFA (French Automotive Trade Union), published in November 2006, and giving insight on the French, European and worldwide automotive market. - This search lasted less than 10 minutes

Figure 10

Search for company profiles: Zoominfo.com

What is Zoominfo ?

ZoomInfo is a business information search engine used to quickly find information about industries, companies, people, products and services

How does it work ?

Zoominfo semantic search technology continually crawls the Business Web – the millions of company websites, news feeds and other online sources -- and extracts business information using natural language processing and extraction algorithms. ZoomInfo then automatically organizes the information into profiles. ZoomInfo also allows users to edit existing profile information or to add new profiles.

Business Model

If a first level of information is available for free on their website, advanced features such as “power search” are accessible on subscription.

Example of search on Ford

1st Step : Type “Ford” in Zoominfo search engine

Figure 11

2nd Step : Refine your search by Geography (if necessary)

Figure 12

You access here a complete company profile in less than 5 minutes