Europages' enhanced database now contains more than 1.5 million exporting companies in 35 countries

Paris, 17th November 2008. Whether used for selecting an overseas supplier, or establishing contact with potential clients, future partners or distributors, Europages represents a truly unique international tool by way of a database with 1.5 million companies referenced, all sectors included. Quality is Europages' other key characteristic; companies referenced systematically undergo a rigorous selection procedure, one of the main criteria of which is international activity. Their data is continually checked and updated.

In the space of a few years, Europages has become one of the reference international B2B search engines. It unquestionably represents an effective, inexpensive means for SMEs to gain access to a veritable international network. The figures alone bear testimony to this positioning: every month, some 2 million unique visitors – executives or decision-makers – consult Europages. Over the past 12 months, they have accounted for some 65 million searches from businesses located in 200 countries.

This superior service is the result of the company's ongoing policy for innovation: more than 7000 titles and 40,000 keywords are in operation in numerous languages, thus ensuring the speed and pertinence of searches made. Contacts are facilitated by the broad linguistic possibilities deployed – searches can be made in 26 languages, including Chinese and Arabic. Programs for referencing, communication and co-branding further extend the scope of available contacts.

The fact that Europages provides free access to some 1.5 million European companies marks a new and decisive step. Based on the most recent research , this figure represents almost 75% of European companies that actively export. It also allows Europages to improve its coverage of all industry sectors in all European countries (in particular Turkey, C&EE, etc.) . As underscored by Paolo Giuri, Europages CEO, "our medium-term goal is to offer a tool containing all internationally active European companies. With an estimated 2 million such companies at present, this will further accentuate the excellence of our service, helping SMEs better penetrate overseas markets – a key issue for the economy of all European countries. In fact, this issue is even more important when you consider that the estimate does not include non-exporting companies, but which are ready to get started, as illustrated by the latest survey by the Europages monitoring body."