I just came across an unusual but noteworthy searchable company directory site I had not encountered before. It’s called Manta, and it provides a pretty impressive listing of directory data on millions of public and private firms.

The information itself is provided by D&B, but the site is a creation of ECNext, an ecommerce firm located in Westerville, OH that was known for quite awhile as a firm that set up deals with market research providers to create a market research portal to resell and repackage market research reports. Over the last several years, ECNext has set up arrangements with a variety of other business information providers such as S&P and Gale.

Searching and viewing on Manta is free, but to get additional data fields on companies, you do need to register, which is pretty simple and of course free.

I’d say that the main competitor to Manta is Hoovers–and it’s worth searching both sites if you need basic company data and don’t want to pay for it. I’m planning on doing a head to head comparison of Manta vs. Hoovers in next month’s issue of The Information Advisor.

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