Business Intelligence Provider Hoover's Releases Latest Edition of "The Hoover's Index" of the Top 1,000 Most Searched Companies
Hoover's today announced the latest edition of "The Hoover's Index," a free, proprietary monthly index of the leading public and private companies, non-profits, and associations which represent the brand leaders, up-and-comers and "buzz" creators driving the U.S. and international economies. Based on a proprietary algorithm that takes into account the search trends of business professionals, including both organic and internal searches on Hoover's site, as well as business searches conducted via major search engines, The Hoover's Index company list is a valuable resource for business executives, financial analysts, mutual fund managers and investment advisors in gauging which companies are capturing the interest of the global business community.
Austin, TX (PRWEB) July 7, 2007 - Hoover's, Inc. today announced the latest edition of "The Hoover's Index," a free, proprietary monthly index of the leading public and private companies, non-profits, and associations which represent the brand leaders, up-and-comers and "buzz" creators driving the U.S. and international economies.
The Hoover's Index, which reveals monthly spikes in business search activity, is based on a proprietary algorithm that takes into account the search trends of business professionals, including both organic and internal searches on Hoover's site, as well as business searches conducted via major search engines. Movement above and below index determines ranking, instead of gross search volume.
"The high rankers in this latest edition of The Hoover's Index include two repeat performers from the Top 10 on the previous list," said Tim Walker, Hoover's industry analyst. "With both buyout offers and initial public offerings in the multi-billion dollar range, the almighty dollar is truly the common denominator in this latest batch of big movers on The Hoover's Index."
The Blackstone Group L.P. (Index #842)
Blackstone's dominant performance on The Hoover's Index month after month reveals a fundamental shift in how the business world regards the private equity firm. A company that keeps showing up near the top of the Index month after month doesn't get there solely because of heavy search activity. Because of the way the Index is calculated, the company has to keep beating its average search activity by a mile, even as that average continues to rise. Blackstone was making noise in the second half of 2006 with a variety of leveraged buyouts. Then came its bidding war against Vornado for the right to buy Equity Office Properties. And then . . . Blackstone's IPO, which dominated the financial news in late June. The short version: Blackstone has gone from being prominent in its own niche industry to being one of the business world's rock stars.
VMware, Inc. (Index #398)
Though it lacked the marquee appeal of the Blackstone IPO, VMware rode high throughout May (when it ranked 15th on the Index) and June thanks to its own announcement that it would make a $100 million public offering -- equivalent to 10% of the company. Since then, the software company has punched above its weight in commanding the attention of Hoover's users. Credit where it's due, though: VMware, which was founded in 1998, is a heavyweight in the field of virtualization software, and it brought in more than $700 million in revenue in 2006. VMware's wares allow network administrators to spread computer functions across multiple systems or servers so that the various machines act as one. This allows big users of computing power to lower operating costs, since they need less hardware to carry out the same computing tasks. Storage powerhouse EMC has owned VMware since 2004.
Facebook, Inc. (Index #364)
In the world of Internet business, networking hub Facebook is the "It Company" of the moment. It seems like you can't turn around without stumbling across the smiling mug of its young CEO/founder, Mark Zuckerberg, on the cover of a business magazine. Why? The 23-year-old Zuckerberg has garnered lots of attention for turning down a rumored $1 billion buyout offer from Yahoo!. Mind you, he didn't turn it down for the publicity -- it's apparent that he believes he has bigger fish to fry with Facebook, which is growing like gangbusters. (It's adding more than 100,000 users on an average day.) These days there's also huge overall interest in social media sites/companies, including MySpace and LinkedIn, because as a group they've gone beyond being interesting: now they're actually important in business terms. Finally, Facebook has recently launched an innovative platform strategy, which allows the company to act as a Web portal and provide online services, for example, to let people see where their friends have traveled, or what they're shopping for. The company started by connecting college students, but now it has gone far beyond the campus.
Washington Group International, Inc. (Index #364)
This Washington does not usually go for a job as small as cutting down a single cherry tree; it would, however, be happy to build you a nuclear power plant. Even after two stints in bankruptcy, Washington Group International remains one of the world's largest construction and engineering firms. The company, once known as Morrison Knudsen, tackles big jobs: think bridges, highways, factories, pipelines, railroads . . . and nuclear plants. Washington Group also makes a specialty of remediation and decommissioning nuclear facilities, and it rates as one of the top international environmental engineering firms. Now engineering giant URS Corporation is set to buy the company for $2.6 billion; Washington Group should win URS an important position in the nuclear business, which has been surging in the face of sustained high prices for fossil fuels.
A.G. Edwards, Inc. (Index #327)
Why build a brokerage when you can buy one? That seems to be what's driving Wachovia in its $6.8 billion acquisition of A.G. Edwards, one of the oldest and largest retail brokerages around. Wachovia has been on a tear lately, snapping up a string of banks and other financial services companies. The biggest deal of the bunch was its 2006 purchase of Golden West Financial, which cost more than $25 billion. The A.G. Edwards purchase will help Wachovia compete with Merrill Lynch and Citigroup as one of the top brokerage businesses in the U.S.
(As an example, a Hoover's Index of 406 means that search volume was 4.06 times higher than the average search volume.)
To see the entire list of The Hoover's Index, click "here." Additionally, for those who would like direct delivery of news about the latest developments with The Hoover's Index, the "Hoover's Hottest Companies" newsletter is available "here."
The Hoover's Index, which utilizes more than a billion data points, is compiled from a universe which includes all worldwide companies that trade on a major stock exchange, as well as private companies identified as leaders by Hoover's business intelligence experts. Hoover's subscribers can click through from The Hoover's Index to in-depth coverage of the history, operations, and executives leading each company on the list.
Hoover's combines insightful editorial expertise, proprietary data collection technologies and a smart, engaging presentation to give its customers easy access to the most enlightening business information available.
About Hoover's, Inc.
Hoover's, a D&B company, gives its customers a competitive edge with insightful information about industries, companies, and key decision makers. Hoover's provides this up-to-date business information for sales, marketing, business development, and other professionals who need intelligence on U.S. and global companies, industries, and the people who lead them. This information, along with powerful tools to search, sort, download and integrate the content, is available through Hoover's, the company's premier online service. Hoover's business intelligence is also available through corporate intranets and distribution agreements with licensees, as well as via Hoover's books. The company is headquartered in Austin, Texas.
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