Tariff uncertainty continues
The hosts opened with tariff news dominating business headlines. Wall Street Journal stories showed markets going up on tariff discussions, down on tariff discussions, and up again, illustrating the uncertainty. Companies like distributors and manufacturers are trying to figure out pricing when they import and export significant volumes. One host spoke with a plumbing manufacturer that morning about moving three factories out of China to avoid this uncertainty.
Site search falls short
A LinkedIn poll asked practitioners to rate their site search effectiveness. Only 26% said it works well. The remaining 74% rated it as somewhat effective, meeting basic needs, or not effective at all, with nearly 20% in the not effective category. This is particularly problematic for distributors with millions of SKUs where search is essential to navigation.
If your site search visitors weren’t converting at a rate five times higher than those who did not use search, there was something wrong with your site search experience.
Brian Beck, Master B2B
The cost of bad search
Forrester reports that 60% of customers will not return to a site where they had a bad search experience. Search visitors represent high intent: when someone searches for a specific product or SKU, they are signaling purchase readiness. The standard for search keeps rising with B2C influence and improving technology, making native platform search capabilities increasingly inadequate.
Introducing the Search Combine
Andy Hoar introduced the Paradigm B2B Search and Discovery Combine, applying his methodology from the ecommerce platform combine to the search space. The report evaluates eight vendors across 12 categories and 48 criteria. Rather than traditional two-by-two boxes with leaders and losers, it uses a medals approach: gold, silver, bronze, or no medal in each category.
Key vendor differences
The research revealed fundamental differences in vendor approaches. Some like Constructor are commerce-centric, using AI and machine learning with clickstream data to deliver relevance. This works well for high-volume products but less well for long-tail items without click history. Others like Coveo are content-centric with heritage in complex catalog navigation. The choice depends on whether buyers prefer to tweak and optimize constantly or set and forget.
It’s not just about search anymore. It’s about helping guide people, which kind of crosses over into the configuration space.
Andy Hoar, Master B2B
Search technology evolution
Most vendors started with keyword search, which the hosts consider effectively dead for sophisticated needs. Some like Klevu skipped keyword and started with semantic search. Vector search is the most advanced but also most expensive and compute-intensive, so not everyone uses pure vector search. A hybrid vector approach appears to be emerging as the winning model.
Guided selling and synonyms
Search has expanded beyond the search box into guided selling. Vendors increasingly offer Q&A flows, dynamic facets, and configuration-like experiences. Synonyms remain a complex challenge: some vendors handle them automatically, others require manual setup, and Group By with its Google Vertex engine claims access to all Google synonyms. The right approach depends on whether product terminology is industry-standard or highly specialized.
Faster path to ROI
The hosts noted that search solutions can demonstrate ROI faster than ecommerce platforms. Companies can run A/B tests on specific products and measure conversion improvement within weeks. This contrasts with platform investments that may take years to prove payback. The Paradigm B2B Search and Discovery Combine is available free at paradigmb2b.com.