ZoomInfo has updated its business and people search engine. For those unfamiliar with the service, ZoomInfo searches and provides information on 35 million ‘people’ and 3.4 million companies. Unlike most conventional company and people directories, though, the information is gathered and compiled automatically by what it calls a semantic search engine. Content can be edited and corrected by the subject themselves, but you have to pay for at least a trial subscription in order to do it. ZoomInfo is free for basic information and advertiser supported. For full access you can upgrade to a ZoomExec account for USD 99 a month, and the full PowerSearch option costs from USD 3,950/year.
I have been attempting to carry out a proper evaluation for some time on behalf of various clients, and the redesigned site encouraged me to pay for a week’s trial at USD 19.99 for the ZoomExec service. I should make it clear right now, that I started this evaluation with a totally negative opinion of the service. My previous experiences of ZoomInfo in terms of quality have not been good and I regret to have to say that the upgrade has not changed my opinion.
The home page features three tabs – company searches, people searches and job searches via content from Indeed. There is also a tag cloud representing popular keywords used in searches on ZoomInfo. Company search and people searches by name are ad-supported: searches by keywords, job titles and other criteria are part of the priced services. One always starts an evaluation such as this using standard test searches on something or someone you know. Inevitably, then, I first did a search on myself. It found 22 people, or rather profiles. These profiles are compiled from web pages found by ZoomInfo and grouped together. Some of the profiles refer to the same person (there were four for me when I looked) but it is amazing how wrong ZoomInfo can be and that it can miss so much relevant and correct information that is out on the web.
None of my four profiles had my correct company name and the information in all cases was garbled. The most comprehensively supported profile, which was compiled from 36 web sites, has me working for TFPL. Yes, I am one of their associate trainers who they hire on a consultancy basis but I am not ’employed’ by TFPL. One could argue that it is an easy enough mistake for a poor dumb computer to make, especially as I am mentioned several times on the TFPL web site. But ZoomInfo has gone further and given me a non-existent email address at TFPL plus a Glasgow telephone number. I live and work in Reading a long way from Glasgow, but even if I did work at TFPL their main office is in London. To be fair if you are prepared to drill down through the web site references you do eventually arrive at the correct information on my own web site, but then why bother with ZoomInfo? Any half decent searcher could get there far more quickly using standard search engines and find more up to date information
If you have an account, you can set up your own public profile and consolidate existing profiles and correct them. Companies can do the same. That does not mean that the information will be any more accurate. ZoomInfo clearly states that it does not verify such information.
For company profiles, you are supposed to be able to view a list of competitors. Not a single one of my competitors were listed. Instead I was presented with a list consisting mostly of search tools: Lycos, Infoseek, Northern Light, EEVL, News Now and so on.
I tried searches on some of my colleagues and the results were even more difficult to fathom. The Advanced Search, where you can also include a company as well as a person’s name, ignored the company name. (I may have been clicking the wrong buttons or this feature may only work for PowerSearch accounts). Since I and most of my associates are running small businesses – probably not ZoomInfo’s forte – I persuaded some of my large, International corporate clients to try it out on people, companies and industries that they know. Their reactions ranged from laughter at the start, through disbelief at how wrong and out of date the data was, and finally to irritation and annoyance.
I did look at some of the other services on offer, such as keyword searching for products and services and Job searches, but I still could not find any redeeming features that would persuade me to pay money for this service or to even use the free search. There are other sources and directories out there that are more reliable and up to date, and some of them free.
I think Data Quality is common problem with huge data sources including privately maintained data in blue chip companies. The only option seems to be a tool showing inconsistencies, incorrectness and incompleteness among other systems i.e if we have Zoominfo then we may look into LinkedIn as well to see consistency, correctness and completeness – I dont think any other resonable solution..
Targeted searches like this are becoming an emerging market. Personally, I find ZoomInfo’s business strategy really obnoxious: “Hi we’re hosting this incorrect profile of you! Do you want to pay to fix it?”
What’s really annoying is that they are somehow managing to get high up in the Google results too. A google search for my own name pulls them up on the first page.
Nice content niche you’ve carved out here by the way. Good writing too. I quoted you and I ranted a bit about ZoomInfo as part of a post I did about potential employers searching your name as part of the hiring practice.
I had the same experience – incorrect listings that actually listed me and other colleague working for a competitive organization.
Obnoxious is right – paying to fix incorrect listings that we didn’t ask for is irresponsible and very irritating. I am surprised that many people will see their incorrect listings for free and still be willing to pay to access other listings that are probably just as incorrect.
Karen, thanks for your post. I read your blog fairly regularly and think you have a great understanding of the space. As the VP of products and marketing at ZoomInfo, I take your comments and those of others seriously. I want to give you an idea of why so many large companies (over 1600) pay us for our service, as well as clear up a few misconceptions that your readers may have.
First of all, we don’t charge anybody to edit or update their profile. That is a free service, and we believe that we’re providing people a real benefit by collecting all the references about them on the web, and allowing them to control their web presence by having an up-to-date ZoomInfo profile that shows up highly ranked in Google search results. All for free.
Secondly, our customers that do pay for our service all recognize that the data we compile has inaccuracies — just like any other large data-set. In fact, in very clear view, we tell our users “This profile was automatically generated using information found on the Internet. This information has not been verified.” However, the real value we deliver to them is the ability to make connections and find information that they never would have found without ZoomInfo. Our semantic search engine is able to make connections and associations that allows a user to, say, search for managing directors, located in the UK, in finance, with experience in healthcare. This kind of search could never be done in Google, Hoovers, or any other dataset without huge teams of researchers to cull through and summarize the data. This is where the real value is: finding information about businesses and people that can’t be found anywhere else.
The good news for those that do require higher levels of accuracy is that we are launching significant improvements to our algorithms in the coming months. To start, we’ll be improving our refresh rate to daily. This will deliver a much fresher dataset (and thus more accurate since as you know accuracy is a function of time). Since the internet is constantly updated by the various stakeholders looking to get their information out there, we believe it is the freshest source of data in the world, and ZoomInfo will now bring this freshness to our users. As a next step, we are going to be releasing significant improvements to the core data itself, which will further improve the experience for our users.
In the end, we want to be the largest, most accurate, most “searchable,” and most up-to-date source of business information on the planet. We’re not there yet, but we are able to deliver significant value today for a lot of users, and I think we’ll get there soon. We’re certainly trying hard!
Thanks again for your post and to your readers for their comments.
Russell, thanks for your response and comments. Regarding the options for editing a profile, I could not find a free way of doing it in the previous interface to Zoominfo but did find it in the new version. I guess I was looking in the wrong place. The new interface certainly makes it easier to narrow down the search and to correct inaccuracies.
I run a small ecommerce site. I never publish my personal information on my website. To my surprise, my company profile on Zoominfo contained very private and personal information. Where did they get it?
I have no interest of becoming a member. However, it was the only option to correct or modify the information.
Zoominfo needs to be more responsible of that information they gather and publish since they do it without people’s awareness and approval. If they recognize a quality issue, they need to error proof it until effective corrective actions are in place.
My profile on ZoomInfo is from a single source. The profile drops a critical sentence from the source and adds information about a mental illness I do not have and a place I do not live, which is not on the source web site. The site won’t let me edit the material without a credit card number. In other words, there is no reasonable way I can fix libelous information they are publishing about me.