Web Weavers

It's Christmas in springtime for engineers struggling to find the materials and components that will give life to their new product designs.

In the last 30 days, GlobalSpec and Thomas Register have taken the wrappings off major upgrades to their websites that both companies promise will make product searches easier than ever.

GlobalSpec, a frisky contender for dominance among web-based content aggregators for engineers that first burst on the scene eight years ago, has reinvented itself with deeper content that Chairman Jeffrey M. Killeen calls the "Engineering Web." He says it's a searchable repository of 100,000 engineering websites with tens of millions of pages of data and product specifications. "We've also tapped into the 'hidden web,' to give access to applications notes, for example," he asserts. The revamped site went live March 25.

Not to be outdone, the century-old industry icon Thomas Register will launch this month a new site called www.thomasnet.com, which aims to take engineers to deep technical content quickly. Thomasnet is powered by thomasregister.com, the online version of the widely used catalog series, and Thomas Regional, which contains information on local distributors and manufacturers. Still in the testing phase as of this writing, thomasnet.com includes listings from 650,000 companies.

Meanwhile, Kellysearch, the largest specialized business-search website in Europe with listings from some two million companies worldwide, is making a major push to add U.S. listings and users.

Kellysearch is owned by Reed Business Information, the parent company of Design News. GlobalSpec's SpecSearch technology is also on the Design News website.

Killer App

"Search is the ultimate killer online app," former Lycos CEO Bob Davis told Newsweek for its recent cover story on search-engine giant Google. And engineers seem to agree. Design News surveys consistently show that engineers use the Internet primarily to search for suppliers and their products. Indeed, in the most recent survey (November 2003), engineers reported that product specs are the most important content the Internet offers them, followed by supplier information and reports on new technology.

Given that interest, the recent search engine developments should garner much industry attention.

GlobalSpec has opted to make searches easier in part by bulking up the website's content, so it's almost a shopping mall of engineering resources as well as products. CEO Killeen says they have included on the site "everything of relevance, indexed in one place." To wit, the site leads engineers to more than 10,000 catalogs, one million product families, 40,000 material data sheets, 50,000 application notes, and about a million engineering standards. While those numbers may be enough to choke your average calculator, GlobalSpec says they show that the site is the most comprehensive resource engineers can find in one place.

Of course, this is the Internet so it's not literally all in "one place." The material data sheets, for example, are there through links to sites on www.MatWeb.com. The standards come courtesy of links to Information Handling Services, www.ihs.com. Still, GlobalSpec has positioned itself as a gateway to that information, especially applications notes, which Killeen says isn't available on any other search engine. (Though it may be easier to search for app notes on GlobalSpec, we had no problem finding them with Google.)

And that could hold appeal for engineers like testing-system manufacturer Instron's Paul Martin, who says he occasionally extends his product searches to such topics as how to calculate the life of ball screws, or the right kind of grease for pneumatic systems. GlobalSpec's format could help him get the information he needs.

But, getting to much of the information GlobalSpec points to requires engineers to register, something they don't have to do on Thomasnet or Kellysearch.

Thomasnet boasts 67,000 product categories on its website and allows engineers to refine their searches by type of company, certifications, and type of company ownership, such as whether it's a minority-owned company. The site uses technology from FAST Inc. to filter and speed up searches. Thomasnet also features downloadable CAD drawings from listed companies that make them available. Thomasnet claims its reach is broader than GlobalSpec's because it includes easy access to general industrial content, such as distributor listings and the names of manufacturers' representatives, and not just engineering information. Whether engineers actually want more of that general, non-engineering content, of course, is questionable. Thomasnet says they do.

Kellysearch, which also contains more general content, would argue that what engineers want most is a simple way to get to product information. And it says it gets them there in just three mouse clicks. That might interest engineers like Andy Helm, of measuring equipment manufacturer Faro Inc. He says he views the Internet as a data book where he can get product specs fast. The "there" on Kellysearch is 150,000 product categories—such as "bearings" or "motors—with layers of subcategories under each.

Judging a website strictly by the number of product categories it has is difficult because each defines "categories" differently.

Perhaps a less subjective comparison is the number of companies listed. GlobalSpec has 50,000 in North America, all of which are engineering or manufacturing companies. Thomasnet's 650,000 North American companies include many that are not strictly engineering or manufacturing, and Kellysearch's two million are equally broad and are based mostly in Europe and Asia. Its North American total is 765,000—again, a number that includes companies outside the pure engineering world.

Which is the best site to use? It depends on what stage of the product-development cycle you're in. With its mammoth amount of resource content such as applications notes as well as product specs, GlobalSpec claims to be the best site to visit in the planning phase, when you're just trying to get ideas and refine your thinking, as well as the design phase, when you're looking for the right parts to bring your design to life. Thomasnet and Kellysearch each claim to be best when you've already done the planning and are ready to find the parts you need.

Best advice: Try them all on your next project and see what works best for you. After all, no one leaves Christmas presents unopened.