I don’t know if you are like me, but I just can’t help wondering who else out there finds searching for products and services over the Internet anything but frustrating!  It makes me think like a kid once again looking for that elusive toy stashed at the bottom of the Alpha-Bits cereal box.  No matter how much you dig for it, you just can’t seem to get your fingers on it without taking the ‘time’ to dump out the entire box!  Of course once you found that little devil you were, more often than not, disappointed in the toy itself, and tossed it away because it just wasn’t what you were expecting or really wanted.  All that, and you still have to take more ‘time’ to get all the cereal back into the box and clean up the mess before Mom or Dad caught you in the act!

Time is our enemy!  Sound familiar?  So when do we do our Internet searching?  Usually when we absolutely need something right now, and it always seems it is precisely when we have the least amount of time to find it!

In speaking with many of our Oilfield HUB members and colleagues it is alarming how many people simply give up on an Internet search only minutes after they started! Frustration kicks in quickly, when you are confronted with thousands of search results and any notion of heading to page two is like admission of failure that you screwed up the search request in the first place.  We often question all of the search engine optimization stuff we have heard or read about and constantly feel we are being manipulated by web design experts’ sitting behind their computer screens in black Ninja suits.

What about the additional challenge of sifting through the plethora of consumer goods, from beauty products to pet care, to quickly locate an industry specific search result for the energy sector.  Whenever I am speaking with a potential Oilfield HUB member, I take up the torch and head over to the web and am amazed with information overload that bombards us each and every day.  Sure, if I have their URL, I can find their website immediately; but the story is completely different if I am initiating the search solely from a product or service perspective.  It’s not that you can’t eventually find what you are looking for if you can devote enough time.  It’s just the wasted minutes that collectively turn into hours digging through search results that have nothing to do with what I am hunting for – specific search results for the oil and gas industry.

Recently I was searching for something simple, oil and gas videos, and just shook my head in disbelief.  I ended up at one of the search sites and of the first four paid ads, two had nothing to do with the oil and gas industry.  Not sure who should be more upset, all of us that have to constantly look through this unrelated stuff, or the two companies that actually paid for ads targeted with key words for a completely different retail audience!  Fifteen minutes later I still had not found what I was looking for, but then after another ten minutes or so, EUREKA, I found a potential site!  My frustration alleviated somewhat, only to be replaced by the added time to navigate through their website to find the service I really wanted and who I needed to speak with to source it.  I thought I had beaten the odds, but no such luck, the site was a bust.  Foiled again!  Back to the search page, frustration returns, I have to keep looking.  Who has time for this?  I don’t!

So how do we solve the frustration we are experiencing?  We are all at the mercy of the Internet, and if we had much more spare time and patience to wander around the vast and cluttered halls of the Internet we could find what we need, where to buy it and who we need to talk to.  For those of us that sell for a living, we would close more sales!  At Oilfield HUB we are well on our way to eliminating this frustration for our exploration and production customers who are looking for our members’ services, supplies and rentals, when they need them most, when they want to buy!  Oilfield HUB goes one step further by uniting the people, the buyers and sellers in the industry, who buy and do business in Oilfield HUB every day.  Get the insider track to your next deal or new customer in the HUB!

One company helping us clear the clutter and the path ahead is Renfrew Insurance.  We would like to welcome Dave Musgrave and his team as our newest Oilfield HUB – Community Sponsor.  Dave will also be a regular contributing editor to Oilfield PULSE, in his article ‘Best Friends with Benefits’.  Say what?

Check out Dave’s insights on supporting your oil and gas staff.