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Went Hot: May 9, 2008 - 9:06 pm
Posted By: DoshDosh 7 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://searchengineland.com)
Category: Other Search Marketing
15 Comments
Went Hot: May 9, 2008 - 9:06 pm
Posted By: DoshDosh 7 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://searchengineland.com)
Category: Other Search Marketing
15 Comments
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Comments
Although Business.com is the largest B2B search engine, I've been very dissappointed with the paid search results. I have three B2B clients and for months they seemed to do pretty well. Then one month a client spent their entire monthly budget in the first day.
Business.com doesn't have a way to spread the budget out throughout the month by setting daily budgets. You can only set monthly budgets. I have pulled all of my clients out, because not only was there no budget control we also weren't seeing any conversions. Business.com assured me they were working on improving the budget control and I'll be waiting until they do before I throw any more money at this search engine.
The paid B2B search directory that I have seen great goal conversion rates in is Capterra, www.capterra.com, (it's only for software).
The Thomas Register is good (as a place to search) especially for manufacturers, which was always their core business. I used to use Business.com a few years ago, but more recently their results seem irrelevant. I say this from a searching perspective. Don't know if they generate traffic for marketers.
I will have to check some of the other sites in Galen's article.
Thanks, interesting list. I wasn't aware of several of these. While I'm sure the traffic is far less than with the more generic search engines, it stands to reason that the visitors would be more qualified, on a percentage basis. And in this age of specialization, it seems like the interest in more vertical search engines will only grow. Makes sense to get smarter now instead of playing catch up.
You do not have to pay to be listed on ThomasNet.com. You can submit your site to be listed here http://promoteyourbusiness.thomasnet.com/free_listing.html and it will be included for free subject to editorial review.
Great list, a few interesting ones I didn't know about. But, why mention ITHound and not Conjungo, also launched recently? www.conjungo.com is a UK-based technology supplier search engine that I believe deserves a mention in the IT section. It is aimed at tech buyers who want to find a local reseller or specialised supplier for the type of technology they are interested in buying. Uniquely, vendors can list their entire channel of resellers to make sure buyers have a good chance of finding the right type of supplier, within the geographical area they are based.
I enjoyed this -- especially because you listed some keyword / vertical properties, which are often among the most reliable sources of information on the Internet (I agree with Esther Dyson that market forces will cause such properties to become quite valuable, and hence valuable content will gravitate toward such sites).
I tested out IT.COM -- I searched for domain/domains. Among the top results was an article about "Consolidating Domains" from a domain named "smart-it-consulting.com" ( see http://www.smart-it-consulting.com/article.htm?node=166&page=129 ). Strangely, this article is authored by "The Google Sitemaps Group" ( http://groups.google.com/group/google-sitemaps/ ). What is especially amusing is that the author(s) advise(s) right at the outset that "Having multiple URLs pointing to the same content is a very bad idea" -- apparently, the author(s) are unaware of the fact that GMail.COM points to the same content as mail.google.com....
At any rate, I commend your work -- and I do expect that smart-it-consulting.com is probably just a quirk. It seems absurd to think that Google might give out advice which is that exact opposite of what Google itself does -- if Google as a search engine were to penalize other sites for doing things Google itself has been doing for many years, then I would expect people would stop using Google as a search engine.
Then again: I hardly use it anymore (I think it's primarily used by newbies and other novice searchers).
Time will tell, I guess....
Nothing suprising about this list, it's the usual suspects (IMO) - but not the innovators that are changing this space. SupplyFrame (http://www.supplyframe.com) is a vertical media site that is focused in the B2B space of electronic components. We (I work there) have a very fast growing site in terms of audience and advertisers created to help electronics manufacturers and distributors reach out and influence global on-line electronics designers. What separate SupplyFrame from the usual directory listing sites is a dedication to pay-for-performance marketing and a syndication strategy that reaches a global audience.
How can you mention sites such as Zibb, GlobalSpec and Thomas and leave off Kellysearch? There are even 5 different international versions of Kellysearch. This is skipped yet MasterSeek and Jayde are in your article. I don't understand.
Thanks, Rich [adman57]
Zibb and Jayde are general b2b search engines. In looking at Kellysearch, I’d put this in the industrial search engine category along with GlobalSpec and ThomasNet. MasterSeek used to have more traffic, but its inclusion was mostly because of recent news re its acquisition. Inevitably, we weren’t able to include every search site. Had we included more of the industrial search engines, Kellysearch probably would have been mentioned. Frankly though, we didn’t see it in our searches. In looking back, I believe it was because it ranked lower than we looked in the organic results. In looking today, it shows up around #40 in Google’s natural search for “b2b search engine” and doesn’t show up in Google’s top 100 natural search results for “industrial search engine”. I noticed today that you have paid search on Google for these terms, but unfortunately we didn’t look there. Rightly or wrongly, we looked at organic results (as one of many sources), figuring that the most of the more popular search engines in a given vertical would show up fairly high in the organic rankings. Kellysearch didn't for the search terms we used.
I find this very informative and useful, including the comments.
Thanks
Keywords, you've totally missed the point.
How come Beena.com is not added here. I use that site and its working well with listed companies. Although its new, their update is nice and clean to check.
The flaw in your approach is assuming that a search for the keyword 'b2b search engine' or 'industrial search engine' is going to turn up the big list you hoped. This approach might find sites in the consumer world but in B2B the searches are much more focused. As you know, sites need to optimize around terms their target audience seeks - not what press and bloggers are searching. If our audience searched on 'industrial search engine' well, frankly, they aren't a qualified audience for our B2B search engine! Now if you had thought to search on a relevant term like 'ac transformer datasheet' that would be music to my ears.
@galendeyoung - Disclaimer: I work for Kellysearch, but I really do agree with JeffC. This is a deeply flawed way to build a list of B2B search engines. Quite frankly I couldn't care less if we don't rank well for "B2B Search Engine" since none of our target market are ever going to search for us in those terms.
If you want to build the list of major B2B search engines then I would suggest a different methodology, such as assessing relative strengths for key B2B marketplace keywords. As JeffC suggests, try searching for "tyre balancing machines" as our users would...
@RanOh and JeffC--I think you're under the impression that Google searches was the sole methodology. We used many different methodologies to identify search engines for potential inclusion. Using Google for several numerous keywords (not just a couple obvious ones) was just one methodology. In many respects, it was a later option in hopes of identifying more. Sorry you didn't make it on the radar. Perhaps that speaks not only to this situation, but also a broader marketing issue as you hope to reach your prospects.