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Google just entered the world of faceted search, following in Bing’s footsteps, and it’s a good move. John Battelle, wrote a strong piece on what they are doing “Google Steps Gingerly Toward Search As Application” and on why this is a necessary move for Google — to deliver search as an application rather than as purely simple keyword search. I couldn’t agree with him more.

It’s good that Google is taking this step for the consumer, and it’s a step professional search based applications have already taken – they just have to be a great deal higher productivity than consumer applications, because in the office time is money.

If you are a FirstRain user you know the benefits of this approach are to get you instantly to the businesses, ecosystem and analytics around your question to help you make a decision quickly. The wind power example Google used in it’s announcement is a good one to look at.

In the Google case here are the results you get:

The results include news and information from traditional media sources, nongovernmental organizations and online sources such as Wikipedia. The left-hand navigation offers the ability to refine results by time and by news, blogs, images, books and more. Related search terms such as solar power, hydropower and geothermal energy are also listed. It’s definitely a big improvement over early technologies.

But for a sales or marketing person what you need is fresh, business relevant results and navigation for the businesses in the industry and the ecosystem of companies engaged in the wind energy industry — wind power generation and distribution. Recent events, industry trends, people-related changes and management turnover are all detectable and attached to the search results. For example, users can identify planned commercial wind-turbine installations; track key components, parts and raw materials used in their construction; and identify suppliers poised to benefit from investments in wind power. Up-to-the minute reports can be delivered regularly via email or mobile phone so that users stay on top of new developments.

Here’s the contrasting screen shot – and in FirstRain you can navigate through management teams, competitors, hot topics and all the other elements of the ecosystem from here – which is what intelligent business search can give you.

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