Reportlinker's blog : Web 3.0, Vertical Search, Information Industry and Market Research News

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pandia search news published this week a very interesting interview of Andrew Goodman on the future of Google and the search engine industry. Andrew is the conference chairman of the forthcoming Search Engine Strategies conference in Toronto in June.

Without clearly naming it, Andrew gives different keys regarding the Web 3.0.

He explains where general search engine limits are, taking the example of the so called invisible web. We’re supposed to think that shining a light on all information is unproblematic, but of course it isn’t.

He also gives its opinion on how Google is setting up personalized search. Done right, it’s a natural extension of what search ought to be. The lite version of course simply orients results to likely intent, geography, etc.; it helps disambiguate queries.

But Andrew, as François Schiettecatte, is pointing privacy concern we can have through the way Google is personalizing search. Reportlinker, and new entrants in the web 3.0 in using tags provided by semantic technologies make easier the browsing through document without gathering users personal information.

We do not have much information on how google is doing (well, if anyone has, he still can leave a comment here !), but one thing is sure. Google "Big Brother" reputation will make them difficult to implement such technology !

John Blossom, Senior Analyst for Shore Communications Inc, wrote an excellent article about companies "Building Quality Business Content from the Web". John gives its opinion on the future of the information industry new entrants. According to John, Business Information 3.0 (Web 3.0 information industry companies) has been born. These companies use "born-on-the-Web content and technologies to create business information services that are several notches above previous efforts to glean quality information from Web sites and other key sources". They are modifying the competitive landscape, as John considers that leaders like Factiva, Hoover's, and others are not able to dive in the deep web to gather Open Access Information.

Two companies (Zoominfo and Generate Inc) are presented as an example. One can still tell John that he forgot to talk about Reportlinker !!

Article can be found here.