The public distributors we follow say their e-commerce capabilities give them competitive advantages over companies that don't have Web sites with robust searching and ordering functionality. This month, armed with only a mouse, we set out to test public companies' Web sites to see where competitive advantages may exist. We searched four traditional industrial distributors and three non-traditional sites for these four phrases:

• 3/8 inch chuck 14.4 volt cordless drill
• 12 ounce can of blaze orange spray paint
• Green Bay Packer hard hat
• 5,000 watt portable generator

Our methodology was simple. We plugged the above phrases into the search box and then tried to find each product. By no means is this a scientific study. Here's what we found:

MSCDirect.com: This is our overall favorite site. The interface is clean and intuitive. The search engine allows you to get as detailed as you like, reducing the number of items along the way. It displayed a wide variety of products for all four items. We especially liked the selection of both NFL and NASCAR hard hats.

Grainger.com: Also a very good site with successful results. We found all four items easily and the exact hard hat we were looking for popped up immediately. The results are somewhat "listy," but complete and informative.

Fastenal.com: We liked the ability to drill down through categories, but the search engine sometimes requires simplistic entries like "drill" or "generator." Even searching for "hard hat" returned zero items. We also would enjoy a picture of the item and/or a link to an Adobe Acrobat® catalog page like MSC offers.

GESupply.com: We liked the ability to narrow a search with one click. We found two of four items, but the deck may have been stacked since we didn't search for an electrical or lighting item.

Sears.com, HomeDepot. com, Amazon.com : Sears and Amazon actually did better than Home Depot. They each hit one search right on the head, displaying a perfectly matched item. When searching Amazon for the drill, we first found a Nine Inch Nails album, but then found many good drill options and reviews under the "Tools and Hardware" tab.

Experienced purchasing managers may have differing opinions of the sites' order tracking, list building, product availability, service, delivery and pricing capabilities. Our test looked at searching ability, product breadth and availability from a layperson's perspective. Of the sites we visited, we think MSCDirect.com gives MSC Industrial an advantage over its competitors.