The portal is operated by Reed Business Information GmbH in Munich, a daughter company of the worldwide specialist publishers Reed Elsevier plc. In a press release, it was stated that Reed Business is concentrating in Germany on four market segments: architecture, medicine, technology and e-business, and publishes ten specialist magazines, including titles such as “Detail:, “Ärztliche Praxis” [en=Medical Practice] and “Digital Production”.

With youbizz.de, Reed Business wants to enable companies and undertakings to advertise their services free online, in an innovative manner.  However at first glance, this service does not appear to present anything innovative.  Similar to other local search services, one one can enter a keyword (e.g. by category or products) as well as a location name or postal code, and generate a results list.  In comparison to other web-directories or local search engines, the number of generated results seems wanting.  There is also no map search, however the location of chosen results are able to be displayed on a Google-Map.  And there is no route planner.

New and different on youbizz, is that every service provider/undertaking can decide individually how prominent their firm is to be placed in the results list.  This is determined by so-called Bizz-Punkte [en=Bizz-Points]. Every undertaking can be rated for free by providing detailed information about themselves and thus be awarded with a ‘points’ rating.  As explained by Reed Business, points can be accrued by the provision of detailed contact information, news updates, press releases, or uploaded logos and corporate data. Additionally, users have the ability to recommend company profiles. For these recommendations, firms are also able to collect further Bizz-Points.  The more points a firm collect, the better the placement in the results listing.

The points, according to Ramon Parma of Reed Business Information GmbH, are used not only by the advertising undertakings, but also by the searchers, as the points indicate detailed and current information about firms.  Firm which enter themselves on youbizz.de are not required however to conform to any specific category system.  As a result they are required to suggest their own keywords, thus determining their preferred search term under which they would like to be identified. In this way, not only companies can avail themselves of this service, but also products could be used as keywords.