Search Strategies for the Internet: Links to Search Tools

PDF of Business Information Key Starting Points & Search Tools

Business Information Key Starting Points

General Business Portals

RBA Information Services www.rba.co.uk/sources/
Alacrawiki www.alacrawiki.com
Alacra Search www.alacra.com/alacrasearch
Eco 5 research.eco5.com
FITA www.fita.org
Intute Social Sciences- Business www.intute.ac.uk/socialsciences/business/

Cross Sector Lists

Intute www.intute.ac.uk
Pinakes
www.hw.ac.uk/libWWW/irn/pinakes/pinakes.html
BUBL bubl.ac.uk

Country Specific

Phil Bradley's list of Regional Search Engines
www.philb.com/countryse.htm
Search Engine Colossus www.searchenginecolossus.com
European Search Engines www.netmasters.co.uk/european_search_engines/

News Sources

General and multi-source sites

BBC News www.bbc.co.uk/news/
Factiva www.factiva.com (priced )
Google news.google.co.uk
LexisNexis www.lexisnexis.com (priced)
Silobreaker www.silobreaker.com
Yahoo News www.yahoo.co.uk

Finding individual newspapers

Abyz News Links www.abyznewslinks.com
Kidon Media-Link www.kidon.com/media-link/

Telephone Directories

Telephone Directories on the Web
www.infobel.com/teldir/

Company Directories

BvD - A Taste of Mint mintportal.bvdep.com
RBA Company Directories www.rba.co.uk/sources/directs.htm

Official Company Registers

Official Company Registers
www.rba.co.uk/sources/registers.htm
Company Registration around the World
www.commercial-register.sg.ch/home/worldwide.html
Companies House
www.companieshouse.gov.uk

Trade Associations

Trade Association Forum (TAF) www.taforum.org

Chambers of Commerce

World Chambers www.worldchambers.com
Eurochambres www.eurochambres.be
British Chambers of Commerce www.chamberonline.co.uk

Market Research & Statistics

Market Research Portal www.marketresearchworld.net
Official Statistics on the Web
www.offstats.auckland.ac.nz
Nation Master www.nationmaster.com
ResearchWikis www.researchwikis.com
RBA Statistics Sources www.rba.co.uk/sources/stats.htm

Market Research Aggregators

MarketResearch.com www.marketresearch.com (priced)
MindBranch www.mindbranch.com (priced)
Research & Markets www.researchandmarkets.com (priced)

Direct Marketing

RBA Direct Marketing Lists
www.rba.co.uk/sources/marketing.htm
MarketingFile marketingfile.com

Stock Markets

Stock Markets & Share Price Information www.rba.co.uk/sources/stocks.htm
Google Finance www.google.com/finance
Yahoo Finance www.yahoo.co.uk (or any country version) and click on the Finance link

Government

Governments on the Web
www.gksoft.com/govt (out of date but extensive and still useful)
Local Government - Oultwood Links www.oultwood.com

Biographies & People

Credo Reference www.credoreference.com (priced)
Wikipedia www.wikipedia.org
Zoominfo www.zoominfo.com (use with care)
Pipl – People Search www.pipl.com
Linked In www.linkedin.com

Search Tools

Top 10 Search Tips

Think before you Google! Are evaluated subject listings and directories more appropriate? How about free and priced databases? Try specialist tools such as Scirus, TechXtra. Use a range of search tools for example Google, Yahoo, Ask, Exalead (see Intelways for a good listing of alternatives). Try a meta search tool to look across several tools at once.
Try and imagine how your perfect page would look and search for terms you would like to appear in that page.
Use double quote marks around phrases to look for words immediately next to one another, for example "air quality"
Repeat the most important term or terms in your search one or more times.
Change the order of the words in your search strategy to see a different set of results. Search engines tend to 'think' in phrases.
Search for pages that have links to a known page. This gives you an idea of the authority of a page and is a way of finding similar pages.
Limit by type of file or format, for example PDF, Word, Excel, RSS.
Limit by type of site or domain to look for a specific type of organisation, for example .gov for US government, or to search within a site.
Make use of the Boolean operators AND, OR, NOT where appropriate.
Have a look at Advanced Search in your favourite search tool for a greater range of options.

Business Information Key Starting Points & Search Tools by Karen Blakeman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at karen.blakeman@rba.co.uk.

Business Information Key Starting Points & Search Tools