Responding to a..'s specific
critique about the quality of the
information retrieved via the current
search functions and whether this
information is useful for a business.
(His other two points were strictly conjectures and not really points perse but rather very subjective (motivated???) statements).
I did a very general search on
commercial lighting. My response gave
me 225 records in North America.
I paged through these items 15 at a time.
I chose this broad topic because I knew that
many, if not most, of these companies have web pages.
The search results gave me many of the names
I was already familiar with. The search result
also gave me web (home) page links to which I could refer to
gain familiarity with the product if I didn't know
about it.
The hyperlink (the name) also gave me these home pages.
Rather than recreating information available on a company's
homepage, a link to a home page is more valuable to me and I feel
is a more efficient use of resources. Why redundantly recreate
reference information?
However, what makes PNL's site less useful right now
is that many home pages, that I know exist, are not yet
included in the database. This was the case concerning many
of the companies in my particular search.
So my question to Proxicom is when are they going
to get more of these links to home pages into the database?
Once PNL's gets these link, its search engine will function
like any other search engines i.e.. it will narrow your topic so you
will have the links to supplier's web (home) page.
This type of engine implies that business will have home pages.
Considering that businesses are already recognizing the Internet
as both a marketing and growing commerce tool this isn't much of
a reach.
In my example of "commercial lighting", very few of these manufacturers had home pages three or four years ago. Now they all have home pages.
PNL, thus isn't working in vacuum. The value of its service
will increase as business increasingly recognizes the value of
getting "online". Certain industries and companies regionally and globally haven't yet made this realization . And thus, for those people in those industries, the value of PNL's services will be of limited value. However, companies in industries that have embraced the "net" will also embrace the net as they see other competing businesses growing because those businesses utilized the Internet for commerce and marketing.
Again, as I've noted before, PNL isn't revolutionary by itself, PNL is part of a revolution. The strength of PNL's concept is that it is ahead of the curve rather than behind it.
ztect
cc. Proxicom (regarding question) |
