Where Do Web Search Portals and Other Information Services Fit?

Web search portals and other information services in ISIC Rev. 5, UN Statistics Division, cover operating websites that use a search engine to generate and maintain databases of internet addresses and content, operating web portals, and providing other information services such as news and information supplied on a subscription or fee basis. The service is finding, organising or supplying information, rather than creating the underlying content or carrying the network traffic.

What does a finder do that an author does not?

A finder organises access to information made by others. A search engine crawls web pages, builds a database of internet addresses and content, ranks results, and shows them in response to a query. A web portal gathers links, categories and tools so users can reach many sources from one starting page. Other information services supply information on a fee or subscription basis, again by organising or supplying material rather than authoring the underlying content. An author, by contrast, writes the article, films the programme or composes the report that the finder points toward. The finder adds value by indexing, ranking, grouping and presenting. The author adds value by creating. ISIC Rev. 5, UN Statistics Division, separates those two contributions because they are different economic tasks, even though a reader meets them in a single click.

How does a search engine turn an index into an answer page?

Follow a single query through the system. A user types a question about train times. The search engine consults its index of web pages, weighs which pages match the question, which are recent, and which other users found useful, and assembles a results page with titles, short extracts and links. The engine did not write the train timetable, did not run the trains, and did not carry the user’s request over the network. Its product is organised access: the right pages, in a useful order, at the moment of asking. Now contrast a news website that writes its own articles and publishes them under its own title. Readers may reach that site through search, and its articles may appear in search results, but the site’s main task is authorship and publishing, described in Section J. The search engine and the news site cooperate for the reader, but their statistical descriptions point in different directions, and the UNSD entry for this area should be read to confirm which side a given service falls on.

Where does a portal stop and publishing or telecom begin?

Three edges need care. Publishing begins when a site creates original content under its own title, even if that content is published online and even if search engines index it. A portal that only organises links and extracts stays on the finder side of that edge. Telecom begins when a firm provides internet access or carries traffic, even if its customers use that access mainly to search. A portal that only helps users find information, without providing the connection itself, stays on the information service side. Software development forms a third edge: developing a search engine as custom software for one client is programming work for that client, while operating a search engine as a public service is the information service described here. The difference turns on whether the unit operates the service for many users or builds a tool for a single client, and the UNSD wording in ISIC Rev. 5, UN Statistics Division, is the place to check that distinction.

Why does counting organised access separately protect the publishing total?

Search and portal services shape what information people can find, and their advertising and subscription income is a real part of the digital economy in its own right. If that income were counted as publishing, the same article would risk being counted twice: once when the author published it and again when the finder showed it. If it were counted as telecom, network totals would swell with advertising money that had nothing to do with carriage. A separate total for finding and organising information shows the value of the index, the ranking and the portal itself, and it leaves publishing totals to measure authorship and telecom totals to measure carriage. ISIC Rev. 5, UN Statistics Division, contains 22 sections from A to V, with 87 divisions, 258 groups and 463 classes in total, so a class level distinction here prevents double counting that would otherwise distort two larger totals at once.

This guide describes finding and organising services for statistical purposes. It does not determine any reader’s code, principal activity or registration, and confirmation for a real service should be sought from the national statistical institute or business register that holds the record.