Call it a deal with growth potential on an order of Inktomi for Alley start-up Prefer Network, the e-commerce "accelerator" for a bevy of catalog and retailing merchants.

In an agreement with the search company whose software helps drive some of the most-trafficked sites on the Web (with Yahoo being a major exception), Prefer's business-to-business network of merchants can now feature their products on portals and sites that use the Inktomi commerce engine.

Doug Platt, CEO of Prefer Network, called the deal a milestone for his company, which launched in April. He said the arrangement would increase the company's distribution significantly and expose merchants in its network to millions of new potential consumers on the Web.

Some of Prefer's partners that will be benefiting include J.Jill, Restoration Hardware, and Omaha Steaks, as well as over 30 others. Those merchants can now feature their products on portals and destination sites running the Inktomi commerce engine, "which will increase visibility and drive more traffic to their Web sites," the company said. And as Prefer's scale grows, goes the networking model, the costs associated with running and maintaining the Web sites in the network should be reduced proportionately.

The news came on a mixed week for the Foster City, Calif.-based Inktomi, which just lost out to competing search engine (and current darling of investors) Google for Yahoo's general search business (Inktomi's contract expires in July). Although the news sent Inktomi's shares down about 18 percent on Monday, Inktomi said its enterprise portal contract with Yahoo's corporate side is still in place, which is a nice fit with Prefer's business-to-business play among online catalog merchants, for example. Shares of Inktomi finished up $5.63 during Tuesday's session to close at $120.69.

The connection to Inktomi's moves into business-to-business information searches can only help Prefer as it pitches more merchants to link their sites to Prefer's product databases and search technology. Among the company's tools is a "match this" service that helps customers match a shirt with a pair of pants in the Prefer Network product database.

The deal also gives Prefer some horsepower to face competition from major retailers such as Wal-Mart and JC Penny's online pushes, as well as the collaborative database biggies of the world such as Abacus Direct, which is owned by DoubleClick. Plus, there are several competitors in the business of helping retailers get online and find distribution, a list that includes everyone from startups like Catalog City to Yahoo (which bought online retail back end service provider Viaweb) and even database software giant Oracle.

Investors in the venture's (undisclosed) first round of funding last fall include Prospect Street Ventures, eCom Partners, Draper Richards, Pennell Venture Partners, Argus Capital, Ted Pamperin co-founder of J. Crew, and Silicon Alley entrepreneur Steve Kahn, chairman and CEO of Delia*s and iTurf.