Alacra has launched a new search tool for industry and market sector information called AlacraSearch. It uses the Google Custom Search Engines and has approximately 12,000 Alacra chosen sites in eight categories:
- Business & Trade Publications
- Law Firms
- Commercial & Investment Banks
- Consulting and Accounting Firms
- Educational Institutions
- Market Research Firms
- Trade Associations
- Venture Capital & Private Equity Firms
The service is free and supported by advertising.
On the main search screen you type in your key words and select a category. On the results page you can easily switch categories. For example, having run a search on ‘beer UK market share’ in the Business and Trade Publications category I could switch to Trade Associations or Market Research Firms. Depending on which category you choose to search, you can further refine your results by industry or geography. Having carried out my initial ‘beer’ search in Business & Trade, I can narrow down the publications further by selecting Food & Beverage.
Alacra already has an industry research tool on Alacrawiki called Alacra Industry Spotlights that has a page for each industry describing the key resources for the sector. The Spotlights are ideal if you are new to a sector and need to get up to speed on the main publications. AlacraSearch complements Alacra Spotlights by enabling you to search these and other sources by keywords. I now regularly use both and find that they are an excellent way of quickly focusing on quality business sites.
Highly recommended if you are looking for a business information search tool.
Interesting. But it does depend on whether the specific websites chosen by Alacra actually allow their content to be viewed – as opposed to subscribing. Also, the quality depends on the choice of Alacra as well. We are doing this on http://www.free-research.com and have specifically chosen high ranking content sites on a sector basis for our news; and importantly, only those sites that do not offer news under subscription. Otherwise you click a link and you get asked to subscribe!!
Just my tuppence worth.
Yes, their website is really great. Have a look on the wiki article on supermarkets, really impressive !