Is Alibaba Any Good

Selling is always difficult in comparison of buying no matter what site you register. However I can say this is one of best.

I have nothing to gain I am not connected to the site if that's what you mean.

I was just wondering if it was any good re value etc ?

No offense, but: why should I believe in your good intentions? Why posting anonymously if you can register. Now, let me ask you a question: is Yahoo better than Google ? Who knows, and who cares! The information any search engine retrieves is just that: information. The use you give to this information is the point! Regards,

Hi Peter; according to the guest below, my attitude was a bit rude. Sorry! In regard to the search engine you mentioned: I subscribed to it years ago, and having searched for different stuff many times I never found what I was looking for! Information is usually not very clear, too many brokers and companies under different trade names... Direct search on any browser yielded better results to me

It is a search engine - alike any other , global spec, thomasnet etc. It will direct/redirect you to the supplier that are registered to it.

As is usual, with any b2B searches - definitely all are not registered to it and definitely through it (or these) you can rarely get the optimum buy.

If you are a seller- may be in Asia region, you may like to get yourself registered to it. If you are a buyer, search through it, and a few others and get the better one from these.

BTW: a number of companies sell htrough brand names and they may rarely feature in these search engines (and that includes the one I work for, and a few others we purchase components from. Once I was searching for alternate vendors for these components, and I was surprised to find our existing vendors unreferred to in Globalspec/ thomasnet and all the others (and as on now these are one of the best and no aren't small, with global business in b$).

The moral is - go for general purpose search, but for critical items, may be you have to go for a proper market analysis (as we did to catch our's and that is a lot of effort).

OFF TOPIC

To the esteemed member,

1. the OP's question no where smells of advertisement.

2. Had this question been more palatable had it been by a registered member ?

3. Just for statistics, out of 375 pages of member list, 171 pages have members with zero postings, another 75 odd with 1 posts, only 33 pages (<10%) with >10 posts. and out of these 33 pages at least 10-15 pages have left or are not logging in (myself included) the meaning is clear.

4. If a guest have a genuine engineering clarification (and this I consider one, since the said site,globalspec as well as the others similar are widely used for procurement purposes. The OP may not be aware of the reputation of the site/its members and hence the question.

5. In paid sites like ASQ, and a few others I am member of, we may be intolerant (which even there we are not) of guests. But I am finding the hatred/intolerance towards unregistered members a bit too high here.

Admin/moderator may look into this aspect, it is not healthy for individuals or the site. Does any-one really think that the guest above will ever bother to register here ?

How many members here have guested themselves before finding it useful enough to register? I have for a few months at least as I remember, though it being years ago, not sure about number of posts before getting in. Fortuneately those times this type of replies were rare, at least i have never encountered while guesting. Of course now I find them quite a bit.