An importer looking for the most economical suppliers of long-grain white rice will find over 2,800 product leads on Alibaba, the world's largest online B2B marketplace. Rice exporters come from leading rice-producing countries including Pakistan, Thailand, China and India.
A similar search on Kompass, another leading B2B Import Directory, returns a list of over 357 companies that export long grain rice. Unlike Alibaba searches, Kompass trade leads are not sorted by country. The Kompass search engine does include a link to each rice exporter’s home site. The global Kompass database has over 2.3 million companies in over 70 countries.
Alibaba Versus Kompass
Alibaba is based in China. Chinese users account for 51% of overall Alibaba site visitors followed by Indian (9.1%) and American (8.9%) viewers. The Alibaba website has a Google rank of 7 based on 50,400,000 Google-indexed pages, and an Alexa traffic ranking among the top 160 English-language websites.
Kompass enables its users to generate new business contracts through its partnership with the European Union tenders system. Not surprisingly, the percentage of EU countries is much higher at Kompass than on Alibaba. Still the leading 8.8% of Kompass visitors come from India, trailed by Chinese (3.9%) and American (2.7%) viewers. The Kompass website has a Google rank of 6 based on 13,200,000 Google-indexed pages, and an Alexa ranking among the top 5,700 English-language websites.
Most Searched Product Keywords for US Importers
In its December 2008 newsletter Alibaba Trade Trends – US, the Chinese-based ecommerce giant identified the top products that American importers most demand in the global market. The list of top 10 product keywords below is sorted based on the number of inquiries that U.S.-based buyers have sent to Alibaba.
- Wood basket … 3,730 Selling Leads and 330 Suppliers on Alibaba
- Cell phone … 173,688 Selling Leads and 5,497 Suppliers
- Used laptop … 12,834 Selling Leads and 1,202 Suppliers
- Jewelry … 510,209 Selling Leads and 13,329 Suppliers
- Candy … 37,237 Selling Leads and 2,917 Suppliers
- Shoes … 669,996 Selling Leads and 18,356 Suppliers
- Fleece fabric … 10,558 Selling Leads and 872 Suppliers
- Apparel … 81,706 Selling Leads and 17,704 Suppliers
- Sidekick cell phone … 2,678 Selling Leads and 6 Suppliers
- DVD ... 98,601 Selling Leads and 8,296 Suppliers.
Trade Lead Keyword Results for Kompass
The Kompass site displayed the following results for each of the top 10 trade lead keywords from Alibaba’s December 2008 newsletter.
- Wood basket … 5 Premium Suppliers and 41 Other Suppliers on Kompass
- Cell phone … 71 Premium Suppliers and 1,934 Other Suppliers
- Used laptop … 40 Premium Suppliers and 1,322 Other Suppliers
- Jewelry … 500 Premium Suppliers and 7,832 Other Suppliers
- Candy … 478 Premium Suppliers and 5,050 Other Suppliers
- Shoes … 600 Premium Suppliers and 7,626 Other Suppliers
- Fleece fabric … 10 Premium Suppliers and 81 Other Suppliers
- Apparel … 1,200 Premium Suppliers and 15,670 Other Suppliers
- Sidekick cell phone … Not keyword-indexed
- DVD ... 120 Premium Suppliers and 2,7804 Other Suppliers.
It should be noted that Kompass organizes its search engine to display results by product categories, while Alibaba search results are more focused on specific keywords.
Best Value for Money
Without paying any fees, an import entrepreneur searching for specific products can immediately find and contact trade leads listed on Alibaba. In fact, the importer can list his or her own company profile on the site. Alibaba provides links to supplier company websites as well as a built-in email messaging center that enables users to send messages directly to those suppliers. Premium Gold Memberships are available, with even more Alibaba features.
Kompass also offers a free basic membership. However, basic members are limited to viewing contact details for Premium Suppliers only. Depending on product category, Premium Suppliers can represent lower than 10% of the total group of registered suppliers.
References:
Alibaba website and Kompass website.
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