Why is historical search data important?

D&B's Historical Search Database is the historical archive of prior searches against D&B's database by D&B customers. This is a unique and an unparalleled source of predictive behavioral data about business activity.

This database contains millions of searches made annually by D&B customers. It includes searches from all D&B customers that use D&B's real-time access systems. The database is updated daily and a rolling 6 months of history is used in the score. Characteristics such as the date of search, industry of searching customer and the exact search criteria are included in the database.

Patterns of specific business activity emerge from the data when a new applicant is matched to the historical search data. "Who, What, When" sub-patterns are developed. Most sub-patterns identify normal behavior and therefore lower levels of risk. However, a small number of specific sub-patterns indicate potentially abnormal behavior, behavior that has previously identified fraud, and can therefore identify higher levels of fraud risk.

The "Who" pattern refers to the industry of the D&B customers that have recently searched for information on the same business. Usually these searches are for credit seeking purposes. Behavioral patterns of confirmed fraudulent businesses have shown that they tend to target multiple companies in an industry susceptible to fraud (e.g. financial services, telecommunications, manufacturers and distributors of office technology) and avoid or do not conduct business with other industries (e.g. insurance or business services).

The "What" pattern refers to the specific applicant information provided by the fraudsters. Frauds often involve multiple combinations of names, addresses, phone numbers that are similar but are rarely exactly the same. This hinders credit grantors from accurately tracking multiple credit requests from the same fraudulent business. The divergence of the applicant content from previously searched data elevates the risk.

The "When" pattern refers to the frequency and currency of the searches from other D&B customers. Abnormally high concentrations of searches within a short period of time, especially with little or no prior search history, indicate higher risk .