How often does govbusiness.com complete its total Internet universe sweep of available sales leads?
Does govbusiness.com remove sales leads once they are no longer on their government sites?
How often do you recommend I log into govbusiness.com?
Which government agencies are covered by govbusiness.com?
What is the background of the Government Data Publications organization?
Are there any costs besides the monthly fee?
Do you offer support? And if so, is there any charge?
Do I need any special hardware or software to use govbusiness.com? What browsers are supported?
How do I Print out the retrieved procurement documents for my use and records?
How come that we sometimes retrieve sales opportunities where the bid opening has already taken place?
How come that we sometimes see the same listings under a new collection date?
Why is it that sometimes a search word does not seem to appear in a document even though govbusiness.com retrieved it for my search?
How do I navigate through govbusiness.com with my browser? What do I do if I get "lost"?
How secure is govbusiness.com?
What are PDF and MS-Word DOC files, and how do I read them?
Isn't government business full of red tape?
I have never done business with the government before. Anything I have to do before I can start?
If I use govbusiness.com, will I know about ALL government bidding opportunities?|
How often does govbusiness.com complete its total Internet universe sweep of available sales leads? govbusiness.com collects the entire Internet universe of government sales leads DAILY so that it is constantly up to date.  Top of FAQ's
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Does govbusiness.com remove sales leads once they are no longer on their government sites? When sales leads no longer appear on their government web sites (whether they have become outdated or for any other reason) govbusiness.com automatically removes them from its database to avoid your wasting time checking out sales opportunities that no longer exist. Top of FAQ's
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How often do you recommend I log into govbusiness.com? We suggest you log in daily, because new sales leads are added constantly. In actual practice, we find that most govbusiness.com users log in once a week, first thing in the morning on a given day. They then simply specify documents collected within the past week by setting their Select by Date "last '7' days" and automatically get just the new listings they want. Top of FAQ's
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Which government agencies are covered by govbusiness.com? govbusiness.com's mission is to cover all federal, state and local sites containing sales listings. We are therefore also on constant look-out for new sites and new links. (If you find a site not covered by govbusiness.com please contact us so that we can add it to our sweep. (New sites that qualify are usually online within 48 hours of your contacting us.) For latest listing of covered sites, click Web Sites for the up-to-date Site Directory. Top of FAQ's
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What is the background of the Government Data Publications organization? Government Data Publications was formed in 1959 for the express purpose of furnishing companies with the best possible tools for entering the government market, operating in it, and doing so as profitably as possible. This goal extends to selling to the government's primecontractors with equal ease and results. Over a quarter million executives in over one hundred thousand companies have benefited from GDP's services and publications. Please click About GDP for further information on the organization. Top of FAQ's
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Are there any costs besides the monthly fee? No. The monthly fee is all you pay, no matter how often or how much you utilize govbusiness.com. There are no set-up fees, no connect fees, no start-up charges, no throughput charges. Top of FAQ's
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Do you offer support? And if so, is there any charge? We offer full support and there is no charge. Simply contact us and we will be happy to help in every way possible. Top of FAQ's
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Do I need any special hardware or software to use govbusiness.com? What browsers are supported? No special hardware or software is required; all that is required is what you are using right now to look at this FAQ page. Current versions of all major web browsers available on virtually all platforms can be used with govbusiness.com. This includes Microsoft Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator and America Online. Essentially, govbusiness.com is usable in any browser that supports the use of cookies, frames, tables and JavaScript. Click here for more information about cookies and security. For the best browsing experience, Government Data Publications recommends Microsoft Internet Explorer Version 5.5 with a screen resolution of 800x600 (or higher) and 256 colors (or more). Tip: If you are using a screen resolution of 640x480 with Internet Explorer 4 or higher, use Full Screen mode (choose Full Screen from the View menu). If you are using Microsoft Windows, you already have Internet Explorer. For other operating systems, or for the latest version of Internet Explorer, you can download it for free or order it on CD-ROM by clicking the icon below:
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How do I Print out the retrieved procurement documents for my use and records? You click the "PRINT format" button on the upper right hand of the document, and you can then click either just "PRINT" or "PRINT and CLOSE". Top of FAQ's
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How come that we sometimes retrieve sales opportunities where the bid opening has already taken place? govbusiness.com naturally has no control over any contents of any government agency site nor would it be permitted to edit any of the agency's data; therefore govbusiness.com has the obligation to "spider" ALL the data contained in the respective agency websites, and if the agency keeps that information on its site, we have to show it. Also, not infrequently there may be running contracts and modifications, etc., so there actually may be legitimate reason for the agency to continue publicizing data after its initial listing. Many agencies also keep a running record of their solicitations which will contain past ones up to a certain time. Bear in mind of course that as a subscriber you would have caught these in plenty of time when they first appeared before their opening. Top of FAQ's
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How come that we sometimes see the same listings under a new collection date? govbusiness.com examines all pertinent government agency sales lead "pages" and links every 24 hours. If the site is 100% unchanged -- no spidering takes place and the initial collect date remains. The moment our retrieval program detects anything new on the site, the site is re-spidered to make sure you are aware of any further information on the contract or addendums or modifications. Top of FAQ's
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Why is it that sometimes a search word does not seem to appear in a document even though govbusiness.com retrieved it for my search? There can be several reasons: Firstly, you must make sure that the document is fully loaded; if not, keywords appearing in sections which have not yet been loaded can of course not be "hit" until they are downloaded. If a document has a drop-down menu, govbusiness.com will search it's contents, but the hyperlinks normally highlighting each match will not work for hits found in such drop-down menus; nor will the Find command in your browser find it. However, you WILL see it when you open up and view the drop-down menu. Tool-tips (small captions that appear when resting the mouse cursor on images in the document) are also searched, and a document will be selected based on a match found in any tool-tips on the page. As is the case with drop-down menus mentioned above, the Find command in your browser will not find it. However, you WILL see it when you display the tool-tip by resting the mouse cursor over the image containing the matching tool-tip. In some cases, documents contain hidden text (which is searched just as normal text is) that is revealed when a link is clicked on. This occurs rarely; when it does, the highlighted hit(s) will be displayed when the link exposing the hidden text is clicked. Finally, the search engine will pick up matches based on variations in punctuation (it does this to make sure you don't miss any anomalies; e.g., "biochemical" will match "bio-chemical" or "bio/chemical"). The Find command in your browser, however, will not generalize in this way, and will only highlight an exact match. Top of FAQ's
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How do I navigate through govbusiness.com with my browser? What do I do if I get "lost"? As a general rule of thumb, use the controls on the gray navigation bar (with gold buttons) at the top of the page, or on the left hand side bar. These navigational controls "built-in" to govbusiness.com should always be used over your browser's "generic" controls to navigate through the site. If you find yourself "lost" or "hung" in govbusiness.com, you can always click Main Menu on the left hand side bar to return to the Main Menu of Services. From there, if you were in the middle of viewing documents, you can click View Results to return to the list of documents. Top of FAQ's
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How secure is govbusiness.com? Virtually no security threat exists when using govbusiness.com. While many sites store cookies on your hard disk that you don't care about, or often even know about, govbusiness.com stores only one cookie to your computer temporarily which is used during the browser session, and deleted automatically when you close the browser. In addition, to save you from typing your user ID each time you use govbusiness.com from this particular computer, another single cookie is stored permanently on your computer. These cookies are harmless, do not accumulate, and contain no confidential passwords or private information. (Please note that if you use another computer to log on, or if you delete cookies from your hard disk, you will have to type your subscriber ID to log on.) There are no ActiveX controls or Java applets downloaded to your computer, or used in any way, by govbusiness.com. As only standard HTML and JavaScript are sent to your browser, data contained on your local hard disk or network remains completely private and inaccessable. Click Here to review GDP's Privacy Policy. Top of FAQ's
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What are PDF and MS-Word DOC files, and how do I read them? While most documents listed in web pages are in HTML format which display in all web browsers, some are found in MS Word format (in various versions), or as PDF (portable document format). While Microsoft Internet Explorer also displays MS Word doc files inside the browser window, other web browsers (such as Netscape Navigator) require an appropriate viewer for MS Word files, which can be easily obtained as follows:
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Isn't government business full of red tape? This was very much true once, but it is really minimal now. The government now understands the benefits of giving all firms easy access and it designs its web sites to be as user friendly as possible. That's why in almost every purchase order listing, a "live" person's phone, fax or e-mail contact number is furnished. Additionally, remember that once you become familiar with an agency's methods, they will rarely change and your sales effort are not dependent on relationships or moods as they so often are in the civilian sector. Top of FAQ's
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I have never done business with the government before. Anything I have to do before I can start? In accordance with the mid-1998 Federal Government Streamlining Act, companies looking for federal contracts must register with the Central Contractor Registration System. This process if quite simple. To register directly through the official government CCR Web Site go to: http://www.ccr.gov. Should you have any problems with their site, you can contact them toll-free at 1-888-227-2423, or (269) 961-4725. State and Local government agency purchasing offices in most cases do not have such a formal arrangement, but you can assume that they would require at least some kind of registration from anyone they do business with. Each agency's web site would contain further details. Top of FAQ's
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If I use govbusiness.com, will I know about ALL government bidding opportunities? A good question. The answer is, regrettably, "No". There is today no single source of government information. The web sites on the Internet are obviously relatively new but none of the other purchasing sources have been dropped. Thus, the government still publishes its famous "Commerce Business Daily" (our electronic CBDisk™), and the government still has a different source for lesser dollar-value procurements (our electronic "Undr25™"). What can be said with assurance is that by having access to all three GDP sources, you will know about the vast majority of government business opportunities. Whether you need all, or can do with just one or two in your particular line of business is best judged by yourself. Therefore, as with govbusiness.com, the two other contracting information services are also available under a TRIAL arrangement. Top of FAQ's
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