SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Plonked, the search and analysis company, today announced the launch of an advanced search engine that significantly improves users’ ability to discover, analyze and connect with tech companies, at no charge.
Plonked is designed for anyone who is searching for tech businesses, whether for lead generation, M&A or a potential employer. “The Plonked search engine is extremely impressive,” said Tanuja Shukla, investor and Spend Labs CEO. “It is truly a first-of-its kind search engine—not just another knowledge base or look-up engine. In a short time, it has proven to be extremely valuable in helping us identify new targets, without the hassle of a long-term contract or painful integrations.”
The ‘Six Degrees of Separation’ for Businesses
Businesses are more connected than ever before. They exist in a complex ecosystem, leveraging tools and services from various companies, going to market with a multitude of partners and reaching customers via multiple channels. These relationships not only provide great insight into how companies are positioned and their brand value and growth rate, but they also enable the creation of a relevancy-ranked business information graph analogous to Google’s view of the web. “Thus dawns the first search engine for companies, Plonked,” explained Plonked Founder and CEO Ankur Varma. “The business network we have created is already yielding fascinating metrics, such as the average separation of 3.5 degrees for most tech companies. In other words, even the most obscure small businesses are in fact connected to the other 24 million businesses in the United States in just 3 to 4 hops.”
Plonked’s key innovation is leveraging the company network and page-rank concepts to deliver better, more relevant search results, with relevancy ranking driven by company-to-company relationships. Showcasing new metrics, Plonked offers an interactive exploration view that allows users to navigate across companies to see how they are connected, with whom they partner, and to whom they sell.
The Plonked Vision: Going Beyond Search
Plonked combines a powerful search engine with business health metrics and personalized relevancy. Plonked parses news feeds, looks at social networks and integrates various public and proprietary knowledge bases to impute overall health metrics such as media traction and network reachability. These metrics provide the requisite insight into how companies are performing. Imputed social connections go one step further, delivering personalized relevancy. “These are the companies with which the user may have a connection,” Varma explained, “resulting in more relevant results.”
Search and Connect with Companies
Plonked provides a number of unique benefits:
- Simple search interface: search using natural language
- Powerful company dashboard: displaying quick facts, connections, similar companies and news
- Business health metrics to more effectively analyze and compare companies
- An explorer that provides a comprehensive view of a company’s ecosystem, including similar companies, customers, partners and vendors
Plonked is an especially impactful lead generation solution, identifying prospects that are similar to existing customers and which have first- and second-degree connections. “Most sales and marketing departments have many lead generation tools at their disposal, but only with Plonked can a user leverage the network to find the most relevant targets,” said sales executive Bill Veiga, Vice President at Aria Systems.
“No other search engine allows users to explore, discover and connect with companies,” Varma said. “With Plonked you can understand a company’s ecosystem and discover both friends and threats, making it an invaluable tool for a variety of users—from sales and marketing professionals to job hunters and M&A firms.”
The powerful Plonked search engine is available now. Plonked will broaden its reach in the future, enabling the search and exploration of all companies and industries.
To learn more, visit www.plonked.com.
About Plonked
Plonked is transforming search with a free solution that allows users to discover and analyze companies. More than a knowledge base, Plonked is a search engine that unlocks connections and identifies leads and opportunities with business health metrics that provide greater insight into how companies are actually performing. The Plonked engine helps users understand a company’s ecosystem, including competitors, partners, vendors, investors and customers. Plonked is privately held and headquartered in San Francisco. For more information about Plonked, visit http://www.plonked.com.
