Increased Google access doubles CAB Direct usage

CABI and Semantico have completed a project to open a large number of CAB Direct's life-sciences abstracts to the Google search engine. Its immediate effect has been to more than double the usage of the CAB Direct platform.

Google can now search and index the abstracts fully. The platform recognises when a user has accessed the site via Google and will allow them to view a defined amount of content for free before prompting them to log in, if their institution already has a subscription to the site, or suggesting that they register as an individual user for access to the full content.

‘Our recent project with Semantico has been about attracting new customers and new markets for our products, as well as increasing usage within existing ones. Semantico has helped us to adapt our CAB Direct platform (which delivers our world-leading bibliographic databases) so that subscribers and non-subscribers alike can find our content through a Google search,’ said Andrea Powell, executive director of publishing at CABI. ‘Usage levels on CAB Direct have already more than doubled, and we expect that we will shortly see an increase in subscriptions. Semantico deals in technical solutions, but the effects are more wide-ranging: in this case, we have both improved the end-user experience and potentially increased our sales.’