LONDON.- What is an ‘aggregator’ when its at home? Many people in the art world have never come across this word before.

You have used an aggregator if ever you have searched Autotrader for a car, Trivago for a hotel deal, or Kayak or Apex for airline flights. Most people use one or more aggregators a great deal without even being aware of the term.

The benefits are obvious. These operations make access to information and choice easy. You don’t have to trawl through thousands of websites to find what you are looking for. So in short an ‘aggregator’ is a meta-search engine which trawls the data bases and websites of hundreds of sites relevant to your search – art auctioneers in the case of Barnebys – to find you the best results and the most comprehensive for your search.

Barnebys was described by Forbes Magazine as: " The Concierge For Auction Enthusiasts” and the French financial newspaper Les Echos said: “Barnebys is the Google of the art world.”

This week Barnebys made its first major search engine update since launching. The system now gives global search results but with the lots closest to you listed first.

Barnebys, the world’s biggest and fastest growing auction aggregator was born out of frustration. One day, Christopher Barnekow, an IT specialist who loves art, was searching for work by a particular artist and could not find an aggregator to provide a quick snapshot of where this artist’s work was being sold. Out of that frustration came Barnebys.

Christopher and his partner Pontus Silfverstolpe, an auction expert started collecting auction houses who liked the idea of making themselves and their art auctions available to a worldwide audience. Today Barnebys is leading a revolution in how the art market is accessed and used to the benefit of buyers and sellers and the auction industry itself which through Barnebys is attracting millions of new bidders new to the world of art and auctions.

What do aggregators do?

• They simplify consumers access to the market

• They attract target groups not achievable by single players

• They transfer users to the affiliated sites

• They generally put price pressure into the business. When it comes to art, design, antiques and collectibles it is the opposite because limited supply.

So what does Barnebys do for you? A number of crucial things that are helpful if you are seeking to buy well.

• It allows you to compare and contrast what is available in the market across some 2,000 art organisations around the world.

• It tells you what is local what is abroad.

• It tells you what is the going price for an object

• It tells you what the history of the object is

• It provides you with an overview of what is currently going on in the market you are researching.

And the service is free to buyers.

Barneby now provides access to no fewer than 1,600 auction houses from the top players Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips to a vast array of medium size and small regional auction houses in the USA, Europe, Asia and Africa. It has taken the company just five years to grow to its current size which makes it the biggest in its field.

Pontus Silfverstolpe, co-founder of Barnebys says: “Today it is all about visibility, usability and searchibility. Barnebys position as the worlds leading aggregator is based on offering our users more than 1,600 auction houses in one easy to use search. This has made us the fastest growing online service in our industry.”

The company is signing up no fewer than 30 new auctioneers in the USA each month. The company’s aggregated database also provides a mine of information about the market for art, antiques and collectables. If for instance you are trying to value a painting Barnebys offers one of the worlds most comprehensive databases against which to assess the value of your picture.

This service which is free to users of the Barnebys website is winning thousands of new users from the collecting community as well as art institutions which need to have access to the broadest and most comprehensive data available.

Barnebys offers a fascinating insight into the buying habits of more than one million users currently on the system. Because of the sophistication of their tracking system it is now possible to see national interest trends emerging. In short it’s already clear that what Brits are buying is not the same as what interests Americans and Europeans. The top ten searches by nation throws up sometimes surprising differences.

Barnebys aim is to make the auction process easy and transparent, for both seasoned and first-time buyers. Breadth is key. Barnebys users have access to hundreds of auctions across the globe and can find items in every price bracket - Edvard Munch’s The Scream, which sold for US$120 million (since beaten by a Picasso and a Modigliani), was among the most expensive to ever feature on the site, but there are also plenty of pieces for as little as £30.

Since early 2011 Barnebys has been signing up auctioneers all over the world to appear on its platform. The enterprise makes money purely on the traffic it sends to auctions on a per-click basis. CEO and co-founder Christopher Barnekow says. “We don’t do transactions on Barnebys, we only deliver traffic to our auction clients.”

The system generates one million monthly online visitors with 51% connecting through the site’s mobile apps. Traffic and revenue is growing 10% per month, says Barnekow.