Greg R. Notess Reference Librarian Montana State University

ON THE NET Duplicative Databases: Yellow Pages from infoUSA DATABASE, February 1999 Copyright © Online Inc.

As the Web search engine companies have broadened into portals, the creation of partnerships with existing Web-based database search services has been quite active. The portals now offer many searchable databases of their own creation, from their business partners, and from subsidiaries they have bought out. But do not assume that Company A has only partnered with Portal B. Company A may well have partner agreements with several portals. On top of that multiple partnering, competing companies may be offering a different interface to the same underlying database. Rather than being an example of duplicitous database design, these are merely the product of multiple business deals resulting in near-duplicative databases. Most obvious of all the partners, infoUSA provides the phone number databases behind most of the U.S. yellow and white page services on the Net.

INFOUSA

Indeed, it is not only everywhere on the commercial side, but everywhere on the Web as well. Beyond even their own Web site, the infoUSA database underlies most free phone number directories on the Web for both business and residential phone numbers. Sometimes infoUSA or American Business Information is cited as the source while in other instances the source credit is deeply buried or not displayed at all. These are the popular phone number databases directly accessible from many partners, portals, and intermediaries.

YELLOW PAGES

Choosing the Yellow Pages link on Excite brings up a partner page from Zip2. The page is titled Excite Yellow Pages and the Zip2 logo figures prominently near the top and at the bottom. Yet once again, the actual data comes from infoUSA. This credit only appears in the fine print, but not on the initial search screen. Instead, it appears on the bottom of the search results page.

Lycos relies on the GTE Superpages which, given the GTE phone directory connection might imply an original database. But once again, after delving down to an actual search results page either directly with the GTE Superpages or via Lycos, the fine print gives the usual "Business Information provided by American Business Information." Yahoo!'s yellow pages, once known as Four11, do the same.

Starting to see a trend here? Even Netscape follows suit. Netscape's yellow pages are available through a partner arrangement with InfoSpace. And who supplies the data to InfoSpace? InfoUSA, of course. Not to be outdone, the Microsoft Network (MSN) also has a yellow pages database. Infoseek's yellow pages link also connects to the Microsoft yellow pages. And while Microsoft hits may not display for people using Netscape's Web browser, the underlying data comes from...?

Answering this question gets a bit more complex and requires some digging into the database and accompanying help files. At first it appears to be a different database from the others since it can retrieve unique results not found by other infoUSA databases with a similar search. No data source is listed in any fine print. So is it a unique database?

MICROSOFT'S SIDEWALK YELLOW PAGES

The Microsoft story underscores an important aspect of the duplicative databases for basic business information- the various services do not all have exact duplicates of the database. In some cases, they add addresses and phone numbers from other sources. These additional entries could originate from other databases or from user submissions. Other discrepancies between the various sources for free Web access to the infoUSA databases could be due to differences in database update frequency.

SEARCH FEATURES

The most simple and least powerful interface can be seen on the Yahoo! Yellow Pages. To even begin a search, Yahoo! forces the user to first choose a location, as in a city and state, before allowing browsing by categories. No name search is available. For certain basic functions, it works well, but more sophisticated searches require more advanced services.

The next step up is demonstrated at Zip2, the service used by Excite. Zip2 allows searching by category as well as by business name. While this is a step in the right direction, it still limits searching to one state at a time.

To go beyond one state at a time, try Switchboard, either direct or via its partner AltaVista. While Switchboard can only search one state at a time for a category search, a business name can be searched without specifying a state. This will search nationwide and as a keyword search. Unfortunately, it is either search one state or all states. There is no option to search several states at once.

REVERSE LOOKUP

For the latter, another reverse lookup service (still relying on the underlying infoUSA database) needs to be used. InfoSpace, also available as the Netscape Yellow Pages, has a wide variety of reverse searches. It has separate entry lines for business phone numbers, residential phone numbers, business fax, and toll-free numbers. Unlike GTE Superpages, an area code is required. However, the number can be truncated at the end.

On the same InfoSpace reverse lookup page is a reverse address lookup. This is for residential addresses. While it can be used in a similar fashion to a city directory, it cannot be browsed as easily. Leaving off the house number retrieves a list of all the entries on a particular street, but they are sorted alphabetically by name rather than in street order.

UNDERLYING DATA

While these sources are used to create the basic infoUSA database, remember that each of the individual services may add their own information to their version of the database. Additional sources could be the service's own list of users or other purchased lists. The frequency and timing of updates to the underlying infoUSA database may vary between services. Thus, although the many infoUSA databases are quite duplicative in general, small sections of the databases may differ between the various free phone number services.

ALTERNATIVE DATABASES

At Hand is the exception to the infoUSA derivatives. The At Hand database is available directly or via its partners: HotBot, GeoCities, Mining Company, LookSmart, and MetaCrawler, among others. For its content, At Hand relies on databases from several of the Baby Bells: Ameritech, Bell South, Pacific Bell, Southwestern Bell, Nevada Bell, and US West. While these are not all of the Baby Bells, the At Hand database does cover the entire U.S.

Here at last is a non-duplicative database. While much of the content does overlaps with the infoUSA database, At Hand can deliver entries and phone numbers not available in the others. In several comparisons, it more closely matched the records in a printed directory than infoUSA hits. Most important, it successfully finds some companies that are not included in infoUSA.

At Hand does have limitations. It is only a yellow pages database, although some of its component companies such as US West offer white page databases. Its searches are more limited than some of the others mentioned above. Access is only by business name or category. Only a single state at a time can be searched, and a city must be designated as well.

For more advanced searching of the At Hand database, try the Web sites of their component Bell companies. For example, the US West service, known as US West Dex, also covers the entire country. As opposed to At Hand, it can search across a single state without specifying a city. In addition, it offers a reverse phone number lookup. Like InfoSpace, it requires an area code, but the right several digits of the number can be left off to achieve right-hand truncation.

A COMMERCIAL OPTION

At $9.90 a month, InfoNOW will probably only be of interest to those with frequent needs for searching this database. The monthly fee includes 22 searches. Further searches cost an additional $.45 per search. InfoNOW's coverage is limited to just the 48 contiguous U.S. states. It offers reverse lookup by phone number, but only for 28 states.

WHITE PAGE DATABASES

Unfortunately, finding an alternative to infoUSA-based residential listings can be more difficult. At Hand only covers business, at least at this point. DirectoryNET's InfoNOW covers residential listings, but may be too expensive for the casual user. US West Dex has a nationwide white page service, but despite the lack of credit given to infoUSA, the results look quite similar and may well derive from the same infoUSA residential database rather than from phone company records.

Given the rapidly changing information landscape of the Web, it is important to constantly check the fine print on Web sites. While infoUSA is currently the source for the vast majority of U.S. phone number databases on the Web, new partnerships and buyouts can potentially change that and change it quickly. Be sure to pay attention to any statements related to the source of data and not just to service names. Just as Yahoo! switched from AltaVista to Inktomi as its search engine and Web page database this past summer, other services may switch to and from infoUSA just as quickly.

Communications to the author should be addressed to Greg R. Notess, Montana State University Libraries, Bozeman, MT 59717-0332; 406/994-6563; greg@notess.com or http://www.notess.com.

Copyright © 1999, Online Inc. All rights reserved.