The results of a comparative URL database test conducted by the independent test facility West Coast Labs have been announced recently. West Coast Labs analysed the URL databases of BrightCloud, Secure Computing's SmartFilter, SurfControl, and Websense. Particularly, the quality of the URL database, including both coverage and accuracy, was measured for each vendor.

    Quinn Curtis, CEO of BrightCloud, stated: "We are extremely pleased to point to third party validation that the BrightCloud Master Database is a higher quality URL database than those of the industry leaders. As a startup, one of our key challenges is credibility. Third party validation our superior coverage and accuracy is critical to our success. With our commitment to excellence, we are significantly raising the bar for the next generation web filtering." The results of the test are that BrightCloud's URL database outperformed all other products in both coverage and accuracy- in some cases, by a relevant margin.

    This is a simple test, whereby each implementation was queried to see whether it had the requested URL in its database, indifferent of category. If the vendor responded with a category other than "Uncategorized," that response was counted in the product's favor.

Coverage was measured across three data sets:

    Highest 20 Million URLs by Page Rank - This is a system of ranking that was defined by one of the founders of Google, Larry Page. It functions using an algorithm that measures pages by the number of hyperlinks to a specific site weighted by the 'importance' of the referring site. The page rank data used in the report were the top 20 million authorities by page rank, and provided by BrightCloud.
    Ranking.com - It offerss a ranked list of the top 1.5 million authorities. Its rankings are defined by collectign information from the web usage of millions of users with the Ranking Toolbar installed.
    Alexa Top 100,000 URLs - Alexa is a web service offered by Amazon (www.alexa.com). Its rankings are defined by testing the web usage of millions of users with the Alexa Toolbar installed.

    Among these BrightCloud's coverage was highest for all three datasets, with over 90% coverage each. The competitive solutions were in the 80% range, except for the Top 20 million page rank URL dataset analysed, where their coverage was 33%. The Accuracy test was based on URLs randomly selected by West Coast Labs in four categories: Adult, Gambling, Games, and Shopping.

More information can be found here www.brightcloud.com.