InfoUSA Lists are Expensive Mistakes

UPDATE 9:35 AM 9/14/2009.  Bruce Nelson with InfoUSA emailed me the following:

Just read your post and wanted to let you know that the pop up for the sample record on the Choose Your Package page (Park Drive Garage) is a dummy record.

It comes up regardless what set of criteria (SIC Code, geography) you choose.

It used to pull an actual record from the list you built, but it was becoming a performance issue, so we just put a static example recently. Your post brings to light that we really need to change the text to let people know that it is not one of the records you will be getting in your list.

This afternoon I did some research for marketing a computer repair company resource website.  I planned on directly marketing the website to computer repair companies, and to do that I needed a list to work from.

The first name that came to mind was InfoUSA, and I was thrilled to find that their lists can be purchased online through an automated system!

InfoUSA Sells BIG Lists But…

I entered SIC (Standard Industrial Classification) numbers 7378 and 7379 and their system returned just over 38,000 results.  The price of the list was a WHOPPING $6,227.00!

For that price I  might as well build a bot to harvest names and phone numbers from computer repair web searches on Google.  Harvested lists are rarely accurate, and can lead to wasted marketing dollars, but you would have to waste a lot of money to get to $6,000.

Holy Proofreading Batman!

InfoUSA has a cool feature where you can preview an entry from the list you are about to buy.  Before I dropped my cash on the table, I took a look at what my $6,000 was going to buy:

There is no excuse for a result for the Park Drive Garage showing up in a database search for computer repair companies.  I entered SPECIFIC SIC codes that should have returned only computer repair companies.

They obviously had this business listed in a database somewhere with an Automotive Repair SIC code.  It’s RIGHT THERE in the sample result!

Why would I pay $.16 per name for a list of businesses that will have no interest in an IT shop website?

If InfoUSA can’t manage their results database, there is no way I am going to trust them to sell me a targeted list for a marketing campaign.

Anyone know a good coder who can build a bot for me?