Introduction: Going Beyond Google for Research
Recently I attended a workshop titled Going Beyond Google offered by SCIP (Strategic and Competitive Intelligence Professionals) led by Sean Campbell of Cascade Insights. We have become so dependent on Google that we seldom look elsewhere to find information. This webinar was a great reminder to me about the hidden web, and I picked up some great tips that I’d like to share.
SlideShare
Have you ever thought of Slideshare as a research tool? I must admit I never did until Campbell mentioned it in his presentation. And it makes perfect sense because there are so many companies that have uploaded presentations to slideshare.net about virtually any topic you can think of. Imagine all the company data that you could mine from companies that you are interested in. This could also be a great job search to discover if you really want to work for a particular company based on the information you pick up from their presentations. Slideshare is a great place to start a search.
Archive.org
This site allows you to view the past history of a company’s web presence. I typed in my company’s URL and discovered that it had been crawled over 100 times since 2000, and I saw some of the designs that I had forgotten about. Imagine all the company data you can mine from a company you are interested in, information they have taken down but you can still access. Companies had information that they longer make public on their websites today.
BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo is a great alternative because you can find what topics are trending. Although this is a paid service, there is a lite version that is for free.
Final Thoughts: Going Beyond Google for Research
If you conduct a lot of research and are looking for resources other than Google that are free or inexpensive, Sean Campbell and Scott Swigart have a book, Going Beyond Google: Gathering Internet Intelligence that may be of use to you.
