| What is Competitive Intelligence - a brief guide | Sitemap and Search |
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AWARE: UK competitive intelligence consultants offering competitor analysis and research services, competitive intelligence training & workshops and CI and marketing strategy consultancy. |
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AWARE Competitive Intelligence Resources
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Search Directories, Smaller Search engines & Meta-Search engines
As well as the major search engines described above there are many smaller, regional and specialist search services, including some industry specific services (e.g. for searching specific topic or industry areas - law, finance, etc.). Some of these are listed under the relevant sections. The search tools listed here are more general or have features that make them noteworthy.
- CrossEngine - a useful way of searching several search tools at once. Enter your search into the search box and then select your search tool. You can then repeat the search with several search tools and tool options - including the major search tools above, as well as their subsets (e.g. Google Scholar, Google Blog Search, Yahoo! PDF search and so on). This is a really useful tool and may major regret is that it seems to override search preferences set up with each individual search engine.
- Zuula - a similar (but less sophisticated) option to CrossEngine. However this also has some nice features not shared by CrossEngine - for example a Job search facility.
- Open Directory - a human edited list of millions or web-sites, where each is vetted and approved as worthy of inclusion. The Open Directory powers Google and a number of other web-site directories (although not Yahoo! which operates its own directory).
- Factbites - a topic search tool that helps give an overview of the search term, with bitesize extracts from the sites listed.
- Snap - allowing you to see the pages listed next to the search listings.
- Kartoo - a visual, concept search tool allowing you to see the visual relationships between results.
- Dogpile - one of the main metasearch tools
- Clusty - owned by Vivisimo, Clusty clusters search results by topic. It is a great tool for searching when you are not sure of the exact terms to put in, as its clustering approach allows you to refine your searching. It also has a great meta-search tool for blogs.
- A9 - owned by Amazon - allows you to customise and select the search tools to use - from a few hundred databases
- Request.net - a small directory but focused on only a few key sites per topic, this makes a good quick reference source
- Lexxe - Natual language searching
- Accoona - Web-search tool using artificial intelligence approaches
- Scandoo - A front-end to Google, Yahoo, Ask, etc. that adds a classification for each found site - categorising it as safe, liable to contain spyware or adware, or containing possibly offensive material (such as weapons, swearing, pornography, etc.)
Blog, news group, shared bookmark, and discussion forum searching
Searching blogs, podcasts, discussion forums and news groups can provide crucial information for competitive intelligence. This gives a small selection of tools that can help in this area.
- Clusty - Clusty's blog search tool.
- Technorati - one of the main blog search tools
- IceRocket - a major blog search tool
- Feedster - another blog search tool.
- Tagground - used for searching tagged sites - tags are common on blogs so this provides an alternative method for searching for blogs of interest
- Podscope - search Podcasts. Podscope seems to translate the audio record of the Podcast in the words, allowing searches of the content of Podcasts.
- Podzinger - search Podcasts. PodZinger is similar in function to Podscope
- Tile Net - a database of mailing lists and ezines. (Also consider Yahoo! groups and Google Groups - both of which have similar material although linked to the respective Yahoo! or Google sites. Google Groups has also incorporated news group archives going back over 20 years).
- Omgli - for searching web-forum discussions
- Delicious - A bookmark site which uses tags to index sites, with each site added by another searcher. Such bookmark sites offer a different way of finding information as it goes back to the early days of the web where people recommended the top sites to each other. Just visiting the first page and seeing the current "hotlist" is interesting in itself as the collection of sites is always interesting.
- BlinkList - Another bookmark site - "Real people with shared interests list the websites they care about" resulting in some excellent finds that may not have appeared in conventional searches, especially as many seem to be articles and individual pages with interesting content, rather than complete web-sites.
Invisible Web Searching and other search utilities
Research has shown that the vast majority of web-sites are never indexed by search engines. Many web-pages are now created dynamically from databases and so cannot be found. One approach is to use an invisible/deep web search tool to locate content held in subject or topic databases. The list below gives major invisible web search tools, as well as some tools to learn more about finding information and some speciality search tools for specific types of content.
- Scirus - Scirus is a science-specific search engine and searches over 300 million science-specific Web pages. Consider it for any science based search.
- FinanceWise - FinanceWise searches for financial based content on the web - and anything financially related, including company and industry material. My only problem with the service is that you have to register to use it fully.
- Findlaw - for finding free law and legal resources.
- CompletePlanet - search thousands of databases through CompletePlanet
- IncyWincy - describes itself as the Invisible Web search engine
- BRINT - a business database search tool (BRINT = a Business Researchers Interests)
- Beaucoup - a directory of subject specific and specialist search engines
- GeniusFind - another subject specific search engine directory
- About.com - a series of sites focusing multiple topics and each led by a subject guide who knows where things are. The sites generally link to many sources that can only be found by those who know the topic inside out.
- Wikipedia - Not strictly a deep web search tool, but still useful as a way of gaining familiarity with a large number of topics. Wikipedia also includes mini-profiles on many major organizations allowing for a quick view of the company, with more information than can be found on some other sites. Also important are external links to other sites of relevance to the topics. However Wikipedia has also come under justifiable criticism over the quality of some of its articles, which are edited by people are interested in the topics but who are not always experts or even correct. (We have come across several Wikipedia items that were wrong or inaccurate, for example)
- ArchiveGrid - a database aimed at helping historical search, giving access to lists of holdings held in a large number of libraries, museums, and other archive sources.
- The WayBack Machine - the Internet Archive at Archive.org allows you to see what sites looked like over a year ago. The site is invaluable for tracing how web-sites have changed as well as finding web-sites that are no longer active or accessible, but that once were.
- Spyfu - this is an enhancement to the also useful, Googspy. Both give information on keywords used in online advertising and similar meta-data linked to searching
- Delicious (Del.icio.us) - A social bookmarking site, giving sites that other users feel worth bookmarking and making public
- Squidoo - a directory of recommended sites, compiled by subject experts. (This differs from the open directory in that only sites that are felt to be relevant for further knowledge are supposed to be included. The lists will be much smaller but may be worth checking for specialist topics)
- Rollyo - a cooperative site where indivduals list favourite sites for particular topics. Rollyo can be useful for identifying Blog sites relevant to particular topics
- Zimbio - a community portal that aims to help search topics - led by subject experts
- SearchEngineWatch - a great site for keeping up-to-date on what is happening in the search engine world
- SearchEngineShowdown - describes differences between the search engines, and more
- Pandia Search Central - a news resource on what is happening on search engines - aimed primarily at search engine optimisers and as a result providing a lot of information on how search engines are changing.
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We try and keep all links up-to-date. However sites frequently change or disappear. |
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AWARE NewsSCIP European Conference 2008 / International Online Conference & Exhibition Arthur Weiss, AWARE's managing partner led his acclaimed full-day workshop on Using Online Sources for Competitive Intelligence Research at the SCIP Annual Conference in San Diego, California in April 2008. The SCIP workshop, a fully revised and updated version, included practical exercises, a review of new developments such as Web 2.0 sites and much more. Previous AWARE workshops and masterclasses on the same topic have received high praise for their unique approach to finding competitive intelligence on the Internet and have been given at workshops and conferences across the globe! The workshop aim is to teach attendees how to find CI rather than just present a list of sources that quickly date. For more information on the workshop and how it can help you become a more effective Internet researcher ask us about our courses on finding CI information. WS Radio Interview Arthur Weiss was interviewed by Paul Helm, the president of Strategic Research Network, as part of the InfoPro show on WS Radio - The worldwide leader in Internet talk. Listen to the whole interview or in separate parts (around 10-15 minutes each) |
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Recommended Book
For more recommendations visit our book selection. |
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After you've heard two eyewitness accounts of an automobile accident it makes you wonder about history. A key part of competitive intelligence is ensuring that the information you use is valid. Making decisions on inaccurate, out-of-date, subjective or biased information will result in poor strategies that could risk your future. The problem is, how do you check that the information you receive is correct? It is not just a case of believing what you read in the newspapers. One approach you should take is to think about why the information is actually available. Information does not enter the public domain (which is where ethical CI focuses) without a reason. Understanding the reason is one step in checking the information's validity, and identifying what is really going on. Ideally, you should also look for further sources that corroborate the information prior to making a decision. This kind of analysis is what helps turn data into intelligence that can be used in business decision making. |
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Competitive Intelligence Training Do you need to We offer in-house Competitive Intelligence Training, customised to your requirements. Public Training Workshops
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