• by Shankar Gupta , July 17, 2006

Lead generation technology and search engine marketing firm netFactor today is launching a product that tracks visitors to business-to-business sites and then matches certain visitors' IP addresses to their companies.

The product, billed as "caller ID for Web sites," grew out of netFactor's search engine marketing business--which generated traffic to clients' sites, but had no method for converting those visitors into purchasers, said CEO Chris Jeffers. "VisitorTrack uncovers the visitors who are entering our clients' Web sites without ever providing any information. It's an automatic lead capture and reporting method," he said.

The product works by inserting a piece of Javascript code onto the client's Web site, which then captures IP information about visitors. The product discards unactionable leads--such as users who come from an ISP rather than a corporate office--and then links that IP data to a database provided by the Jigsaw Data Corporation, which provides company names and contact information for various executives and department heads within the company.

The aim of VisitorTrack, Jeffers said, is not to identify precisely who visited the Web site, but rather the company they came from, what they were looking for, and who to contact at the company about completing a sale. "Who did the search isn't really important to how our clients use the product, because they'll spend a lot of wasted time trying to find who performed the search," he said. "Instead, the product identifies that that company may have a need or problem."