One reliable tool that helps government buyers, specifiers and managers find what they need is the Govpro.com site. Go to the site and search by date or relevancy, or search through one of the nine categories at the top of the page. The categories include Green, Fleets, Grounds, and other product areas.

Another product search tool is the Government Product Guide, which is Government Product News' annual print and online directory of products and services purchased by local, state and federal government officials.

The ThomasNet site (TN) is another source for public purchasers seeking information on products. It is a product sourcing and supplier selection platform for original equipment manufacturer (OEM), and maintenance/repair/ operations (MRO), and other products and services. ThomasNet.com has information on more than 607,000 suppliers of industrial products — everything from adhesives to welding equipment.

"The platform serves procurement professionals, engineers, plant/facility management, and other buyers from larger corporations, educational institutions, government agencies, the military and small business," says Donna Cicale, ThomasNet's director of marketing communications and audience development.

"What differentiates TN from the search engines is that it's built by engineers for engineers and it's built by procurement professionals for procurement professionals. It's an ongoing design that will meet the needs and roles of these professionals so they can do their jobs better. We view TN as a platform, not a search engine, because it offers not only information, but tools," Cicale told Govpro.com.

TN is enabling selected organizations and a small segment of its audience to test out the ThomasNet product search beta site. The site is based on ThomasNet's product classification system, which defines more than 4,000 product families down to the attribute and attribute-value level.

"We've built this app for the sole purpose of finding the kind of product content that users need," says Tom Greco, ThomasNet's vice president for publishing operations. "We've used this taxonomy or product schema to power our search technology, so it's effectively a semantic search application. The benefit to users at the site who are looking to buy a product is that they can source by unique specification, both by typing in the search box or by using catalog-like side navigation tools."

The product search app includes information on more than 100 million parts from 30,000 suppliers. The beta system includes the TN database of more than 2,000 supplier catalogs. The system can search more than 120,000 PDF catalogs and more than 20,000 supplier web sites that have product detail.

ThomasNet is developing its product classification taxonomy and relating it to the United Nations Standard Products and Services Code (UNSPSC) classification system. "Within the next 12 months we plan to allow the user to search by UNSPSC code, which may be useful to a segment of buyers," says TN's Greco.

For users of the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS), there is an NAICS translation file within UNSPSC, so the TN product search function can support NAICS as well, Greco says. TN has no plans in the immediate future to support NIGP Commodity/Services Code, but it is something TN is investigating, Greco says.

To go with TN's request for proposal (RFP) manager, TN is working on other enhancements to help public purchasers build RFPs. "We are in preliminary stages, looking at building a product configurator module based on our TN product search classification structure. We'll be leveraging our classification structure so users can develop a request for quotation (RFQ) by specific product attribute if they are looking for a custom product in particular," Greco told Govpro.com.