Kellysearch
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[edit] Kellysearch
The roots of the Kellysearch business-to-business web directory can be traced all the way back to 1799 when Frederic Festus Kelly – His Majesty’s Inspector of Inland Letter Carriers – produced the first ever edition of the Post Office London Directory. In 1802, Kelly & Co Ltd was launched and throughout the 19th century Frederic Kelly gradually built upon his original publication, producing directories for an increasing number of UK counties.
Other publications followed including the “Handbook to the Titled, Landed and Official Classes” (1875) and “Merchants, Manufacturers and Shipper’s” (1877) until finally in 1897, Kelly & Co Ltd was renamed “Kelly’s Directories Ltd”. This name stuck for another 106 years before being renamed Kellysearch in 2003 to reflect its focus away from hard copy directories and towards an Internet based product search engine.
In the years since the Kelly’s Directory was born it has evolved with new technology to also provide company and product information to its users on CD-Rom, digital lists and finally the Internet with Kellysearch.
Kellysearch.co.uk,[1], not constrained by bookbinding limits, CD data storage capabilities or publication dates now contains continually updated product and service information on over 2 million companies around the world. There are Kellysearch business units set up to serve specific markets, namely Kellysearch.com[2] - US, Kellysearch.co.uk[3] - UK, kellysearch.nl[4] - Netherlands, Kellysearch.co.in[5] - India, kellysearch.de[6] - Germany and KellysearchAsia.com[7] - South East Asia. It is now also searchable in many different languages and in the last few years has introduced a fully searchable online-catalogue library and product press release section.
The old editions of the Kelly’s Directories are seen as highly collectable by many and have also become a useful reference tool for people tracing the history of local areas (with the ancient data now available to buy on CD Rom from many entrepreneurial sources for this purpose.) Every copy of the Kelly’s Directory ever published is held in the Guildhall Library [8] in London.
In the UK it competes directly with Applegate for market share
