First, you should be able to go to a professional. However you should also insist that they sign a non-disclosure agreement before giving them any information. These are legal documents, which protect you if somebody who you pass information to breaks the terms of the agreement. You can put in clauses relating to damages so your ideas should be safe. Furthermore, using a professional information searcher is more likely to get results quickly and easily, and you are less likely to miss something important (assuming, of course, that you find a competent searcher).

With regards to searching on the Internet look at the advanced search facilities on the search engines you use, which may help you to restrict topics more precisely to what you are looking for. You should also consider including complex search terms to limit the results shown (see the help pages on each search engine for these). For example if you are searching on the single word BOND (not a clever search - but it makes a good example) you would get sites for James Bond, Equity Bonds, Chemical Bonds, Glue (as in bonding), and probably a number of others. Other tricks are to find a relevant site, and identify keywords that this site uses (both in the page and in its keyword Metatag which you can see at the top of the source code of the web-page, using the View Source command on your Internet browser). You then use these keywords to search with.

Also, don't restrict yourself to just one search tool but use several. Research has shown that no single search engine covers more than a fraction of the web, and more importantly, they don't all index pages in the same way. So by using several search engines you cover more pages, and also different ways of ranking the pages that are actually found. (However even using several search tools, you still miss out pages hidden in what is known as the deep web or invisible web. That is why using a professional searcher can pay off).

As well as the well known search tools such as Google, Yahoo, and Ask also consider using more specialist search tools. There are several of these to consider. You can use concept search engines such as Kartoo, and less popular, but still extremely good, search engines such as Exalead which allows you to refine searches easily and currently (January 2007) offers more advanced search options than any of its competitors, and Windows Live Search (formerly known as MSN Search) which includes some good classifications and graphical ways of enhancing search results. (You can learn about the latest tricks and tips for searching at web-sites such as http://www.searchenginewatch.com and http://www.searchengineshowdown.com both of which give guides to better searching and list the top search engines and their features.

Also worth watching out for are the major commercial search databases such as Factiva, Dialog and Lexis Nexis. (Recently these services have started to offer occasional users the flexibility of paying for individual articles without the need to purchase a subscription, so you should also consider using one of these products to search for any relevant news stories rather than restricting yourself to potential competitor web-sites).

Finally, don't ignore offline sources. These include trade directories (many of which are online also) but also trade associations, prospects, potential suppliers and others. Contact Us for more information on going down these routes.