Centraal Beefing Up Staff, Opens NY Office

Centraal Corp. in Palo Alto, CA said that it added sales staff and opened a New York office to keep up with demand for its RealNames Web navigation service.

“Our daily user rate has increased by 100% since the end of July, to nearly 6 million visitors per week. We also know that nearly 75% of these visitors are ‘unique users’,” said Ted West, executive vice president of sales and marketing for Centraal.

Since the RealNames launch on the AltaVista site in May, Centraal said it has seen a 100% growth in sales of RealNames to major corporations and a notable rise in RealNames user resolutions, from 300,000 to nearly one million per day.

Other sales team members are Susan Rotella, vice president sales operations and service, Amy Katch, director of key accounts, and Laurel Krause, key account manager, and are based in Palo Alto. Kathy Spaeth, key account manager, is based out of the New York office. Centraal said it plans to extend the New York sales team to five persons before the end of the year.

A RealName “resolution” occurs when an Internet user enters a RealName address into a RealName-enabled browser or search box. It is a direct link to a company’s site. Clients can track how visitors came to their site, what they were looking for, and at what page they left the site.