Inside Channel Intelligence
The Channel Census
Your distributor list, crawled end to end — what is reachable, what publishes a catalog, what platform it runs on, and where the door is locked.
- Scope
- Up to 25 distributor domains
- Layers
- Reconnaissance only
- Timeline
- 3–5 business days
- Deliverable
- Executive census report
The problem
What this is for
Ask most manufacturers which of their distributors publish their products online and the honest answer is that nobody knows. There is a spreadsheet of domains, a set of relationships, and an assumption that the catalog made it onto the website. Some of those domains are parked. Some run a catalog with four hundred products and no part numbers. Some sit behind a dealer login, which is a legitimate answer and a different one from having no catalog at all. Until somebody separates those cases, every channel decision is made on a guess about what is out there.
What you are buying
A crawl of up to 25 distributor domains that reports what in this channel is machine-readable at all. For each domain: reachability, catalog presence and depth, the platform it runs on, access restrictions, and digital maturity signals. It is a reconnaissance layer only — HTTP requests at one per second, no resolution — which is why it is quick to run and why it is the sensible first step.
The process
How the census runs
Reconnaissance before extraction. The census establishes what each domain is and what it will let us read, which is the thing every later engagement is priced and scoped against.
We take your distributor list as it is
A spreadsheet of domains is enough. No integration, no access, no involvement from the distributors themselves — everything the census reads is a public page anyone with a browser could open. If the list is out of date, that is a finding rather than a blocker.
You getYour domain list, deduplicated and resolved
Input
- Domains supplied
- 26
- Duplicates and redirects merged
- 2
- Distinct domains crawled
- 24
We establish what is actually reachable
Live, parked, redirected or gone. This is the least glamorous finding in the report and frequently the one that gets read out loud in the meeting: a distributor in the incentive programme whose domain has not resolved since last year is a fact, not an opinion.
You getReachability status per domain, with the response evidence
Pipeline
- Domain requested
- Resolved and classifiedLive · parked · gone
- Evidence storedResponse and URL
We measure the catalog and the platform under it
Whether a catalog exists, roughly how deep it goes, and what it runs on — Shopify, WooCommerce, Adobe Commerce, a custom build, or a marketplace storefront. Platform matters commercially: it predicts whether a distributor could take a product feed from you at all, which is the next question you will be asked.
You getCatalog depth and platform, per distributor
Catalog and platform
- Shopify
- 6 distributors
- WooCommerce
- 4 distributors
- Custom build
- 3 distributors
- Marketplace storefront only
- 1 distributor
We record where the door is locked, and say so
Dealer logins, robots.txt exclusions and automated-access blocking. We respect all three. A gated distributor is reported as gated with a recommendation to handle it by manual review or direct outreach — never worked around, and never quietly counted as having no catalog.
You getAn explicit gated list, with the reason for each
Access restrictions
- Open catalog
- 14
- Dealer login required
- 3
- Excluded by robots.txt
- 1
- Automated access blocked
- 1
You get the report and a recommended next step
Distributor-level findings, evidence links, and a straight recommendation about what is worth doing next — displacement mapping on the readable ones, outreach on the gated ones, or nothing yet. If the channel turns out to be too thin online to justify going further, that is the finding and you have it in writing.
You getAn executive report with per-distributor findings and next steps
Channel readability, 24 domains
- Readable catalogs58%
- No catalog online21%
- Gated or blocked13%
- Parked or gone8%
Examples
What the census reports
Five signals per distributor, each recorded with the page it was read from — enough to sort a channel without spending a cent on resolution.
Reachability and presence
Whether the domain resolves, whether a catalog exists behind it, and whether either has changed since you last looked.
- Live, parked or inaccessible
- Catalog present, yes or no
- Redirects and merged domains
Depth and platform
How much of a catalog it really is, and what it runs on — the two things that predict whether a data relationship is even possible.
- Catalog depth signals
- Shopify, WooCommerce, custom, marketplace
- Digital maturity indicators
Access restrictions
Where the published catalog stops and the gated one begins, stated plainly rather than treated as an absence of data.
- Dealer login required
- robots.txt exclusion
- Automated-access blocking
The mechanics
What you are actually agreeing to
Also inside Channel Intelligence
Displacement Mapping
The flagship. Competitor brands per distributor, per category, with evidence.
How it worksWhitespace Mapping
The inverse of displacement, and usually the easier sales conversation.
How it worksChange Monitoring
The retainer. A census is a project; change detection is a standing reason to be in the account.
How it worksDistributor Qualification
Per domain, on demand. Diligence on the half of a distributor you can check yourself.
How it worksNext step
Start with the census.
Thirty minutes, no preparation needed. Tell us how many distributors you sell through and which categories you are contesting, and we'll tell you what a crawl of your channel would actually cover — including when the answer is not enough to be worth it.
Free · 30 minutes · no obligation