GravityStream
Category: INNOVATION Award: GOLD
Entrant: Netconcepts
Entrant Credits:
Nigel Varcoe, Group Chief Executive
GravityStream - a turn-key hosted service that gives search engines like Google easy access to all dynamically-generated web site content regardless of the site's back-end architecture - is a uniquely innovative approach to a common problem. Specifically, the problem is that search engines often avoid dynamically-generated (i.e. from a database) web pages for fear of getting caught in an infinite loop called a "spider trap". Our research shows this problem is marked amongst the 100 largest cataloguers in the US with, as of last year, a paltry <5% of their product content being included in Google. Our solution to this problem, dubbed GravityStream, is unlike competing solutions in that it provides a search engine friendly replica of the entire online catalogue with up-to-the-minute updated pricing, requiring hardly any of the customer's internal IT resources to implement. In effect, GravityStream acts as a translator between the spider-unfriendly website and search engine "spiders" that crawl the Web looking for web pages to include in their massive database. It translates the site into a spider-friendly form in order to create a version of a company's dynamic pages that search engines are more willing to index. All this is achieved without any noticeable difference between the existing website and any pages of the site visitors find in the search engine's results pages. GravityStream was instrumental in the recent partnership Netconcepts entered into with the pre-eminent performance based online marketing company, Performics (a subsidiary of DoubleClick), because it is unique, well-suited to pricing on a performance basis, and is able to generate revenues "while we sleep". The partnership has already delivered significant revenues to Netconcepts and garnered major GravityStream customers such as Bose (the stereo components company) and LL Bean (the 21st largest cataloguer in the US). With a US "provisional patent application" for this technology in the works, Netconcepts is excited with the prospects of holding on to this leadership position in the US marketplace.
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