We all know by now that Websites want to be “sticky,” that is, they want you to stay on their site. As a result, there are countless of portals that are licensing and providing data from a variety of sources in order to create brand awareness, increase site traffic and stickiness, and generate revenues. Portals are important research tools because individuals or companies have gathered in one place links to the most relevant Websites for a given subject.

The original portal is Yahoo! It was designed to serve as a good starting point to the vast quantity of data on the ‘net and was organized in subject categories to achieve that purpose.

Now, subject specific portals are the extremely common and well known, with one of the best examples being Hoover’s Online and D&B Company. If you are researching a particular company and begin your search at Hoover’s Online, you will not only be presented with Hoover’s analysis of the company, but also with links to additional information about the company provided by a host of different sources. An even more specific portal is ValuationResearch.com, a portal for business appraisers.

An article in I/S Analyzer says “Information, too little, too much, in too many nooks and hidden crannies with little to differentiate one source from the other, is a constant problem in today’s business world.” Portals definitely help with this information challenge because portals save Internet searchers a lot of time by providing a good place to begin a research project.

While many of us think of the Internet as a B2C marketplace, many Internet analysts believe the future of the ‘net lies in the B2B arena. Many companies are taking advantage of participating in industry-specific vortals, information professionals are provided with another source of industry data. Vortals provide information and resources for a particular industry. In most cases vortals are developed so that companies can easily participate in B2B activity—buyers and sellers looking to do business. Hundreds of vortals exist for diverse industries from steel manufacturing to trucking to dentistry.

Vortals have taken off because they can save companies money. Instead of paying a middleperson up to 40 percent to sell its goods, a company pays the portal around 10 percent for the transaction. Vortals are also an advertising channel, giving participating companies a wider market reach.

Why should financial professionals be interested in vortals? As one author writes, “wherever money is exchanged, so is information.” In addition to providing a venue for buyers and sellers, vortals can also serve as a hub for peer discussions, current industry and company news, buyers’ guides, job listings, trade show data, interactive catalogs, and employee training courses—all potential sources of data.

However, not all information on a vortal is available for public viewing. Because many vortals are integrated with participating companies’ back-end systems or intranets, a lot of the data is proprietary. If you are looking for a quick industry overview or forecast, it is probably more fruitful to search a database of trade journal articles or find the relevant trade association. However, for more in-depth competitive intelligence or industry analysis projects, vortals may provide some interesting data.

To find a vortal for an industry you could start with Business.com and locate that industry from Business.com’s home page, then select “B2B Markets.” For example Business.com provides links to many vortals, or B2B markets, for the restaurant industry, such foodplanet.com and foodgalaxy.com. There seems to be a vortal for just about any industry where buying and selling goes on. Another great Internet site is prismbusinessmedia.com that provides content from dozens of technical and trade magazines Prism publishes, job listings and supplier directories. The suppliers of directories are gold mines, because they contain hundreds of company listings from the combined printed buyers’ guides of the Prism Business Media publications. Having access to Prism Media magazines is nothing to skim over. What we’re talking about are data-filled publications that you can search by industry and keyword for free full-text articles.

Keep in mind that most vortals are established to serve as a distribution channel for companies within an industry as a way for buyers and sellers to meet and conduct business. Each vortal is unique, many are membership-based, and the amount of information available to the nonmember researcher can range from a gold mine to nada.