But we love Google!

By Staff -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 9/1/2004 12:00:00 AM MDT

Internet search engines are invaluable research tools, but can be frustrating when they return volumes of irrelevant results along with a few useful ones. GlobalSpec has introduced The Engineering Web—the first in what may be a wave of content-specific Internet search engines—for product, system, or process design engineers.

The "vertical" breakthrough is context: every search is in the engineering domain. The Engineering Web crawls, filters, and indexes about 100,000 engineering-related sites—a fraction of the entire Worldwide Web—so all results are relevant.

For example, running a search on "spring" will generate only mechanical spring-related information—not spring clothing sales, or garden shows. This "narrow casting" approach increases usefulness and efficiency of Web-based research.

The Engineering Web also organizes. Once an initial search has been created, a list of keywords appears to filter results. Or a search can be done for specific types of information or in specific places.

By exposing the "hidden web" of engineering information that traditional broad-based Internet search engines miss, users can access sites that usually require registration or payment, such as sites for patents, application notes, and standards, for which GlobalSpec has pre-existing relationships.

The Engineering Web returns results from:

50,000 Application Notes;
4.3 million patents (all applicable U.S. and European patents);
1 million technical standards abstracts; and
40,000 Materials Properties dense fact sheets.

The Engineering Web complements Globalspec's Web site, which already connects more than one million buyers of components, systems, and materials to sellers.

GlobalSpec's The Engineering Web up close

Product category/definition Engineering Content-Specific Internet Search Engine: search engine that works against pre-selected engineering-information sites

Markets served Wide range of manufacturing companies' engineering, R&D, and technical services/support departments; all sizes of companies

Problem Solved Early conceptual design materials, components and supplier comparison, and selection assistance via web search with only relevant results

Differentiators Web search with engineering context; organization for search by keyword or info type filters; access to "hidden" information inside firewalls of key content providers

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