For those who missed it, the Whitespark redesign of the interactive US Search Ecosystem tool was recently published, and it shows just how much the research industry is vast and complex. The ecosystem visualizes the web of search engines, data providers, publishers, directories and other companies that use local business data to fuel a simple action that people do everyday: search online.
For example, Infographics identifies Infogroup, Acxiom, Neustar / Localeze, and Factual as primary data aggregators, which collect and validate business location data and share this data with publishers such as Apple. , Bing, Foursquare and Google. (I collectively refer to data aggregators and large publishers as data amplifiers because they share the location data of a company not only with researchers, but also with other applications, tools, websites and business world.)
According to Whitespark, the ecosystem "shows how business information is distributed online, who are the main data providers, how search engines use data and how it flows." The interactive tool helps you to understand the importance of accurate sharing the data and consequences of maintaining inaccurate data.
[Read the full article on Search Engine Land.]
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