US - Canada Web Marketing Research Company Uses Internet Search Engine Marketing for Business Research Studies
Our business cards say Internet marketing research company. Our web
marketing researchers study hot topics in research for US and
Canadian companies using strategic marketing tools for business
research.
Internet research can seem overwhelming, with the
millions of sites and resources from which to choose. Usenet
newsgroups, FTP sites and gopher archives, as well as lists
of white pages and yellow pages of email addresses add to the
confusion!
Our web marketing researchers study hot topics in research for US and Canadian companies.
Luckily, there are a number of web research tools to help you find what you're looking for online. Learning to use these Internet research tools effectively pays dividends in time saved and helpful business information gathered.
Using web search tools, you can find useful information online to use in
developing your marketing strategy. You can find data about competitors'
promotions, product lines and pricing. Also, performing Internet research
to study government data, find low-cost suppliers, or research web
trends in your market can strengthen your business decisions.
Surfing Hyperlinks
Search Engines
Metasearches
What's New
Search Engines With Directories
Locating Email Addresses
Searching for Software
Finding Newsgroups
Gopher Archives
Linking to web research sites of interest using hotlinks on the web page you're
reading is an easy way to move around the Web.; however, you may find
yourself wandering around the Web for hours without locating any useful
information.
Certain web sites, often termed jumpstations, list collections of web sites for various topic areas. Business groups, universities,
or simply interested individuals develop these lists. You may encounter
jumpstations when you're surfing the Net, or you may find their
addresses in news and feature articles about the Internet. Evaluate
the completeness and quality of these listings and whether they
remain up-to-date. Add a bookmark to your browser for sites you
find helpful so you can return to them again. University, trade
association and library web sites often provide good places to start.
(Search on the word "jumpstation" to see one.)
Search engines build databases of key words to help you locate web sites. You type in one or more keywords or a question, and the search engine attempts to return a listing of relevant sites. There
are more than a dozen popular search engines, each offering certain
advantages. Since keeping the search engine databases up-to-date
is an almost impossible task, you should use several search
engines to get a comprehensive review of what's on the Web. (Metasearches
(described below) can also help you overcome this problem. Remember,
too, that new sites will take a few days to several weeks to appear,
so you might need to use "What's New" directories (see
below) to find them.)
Most popular search engines are free because they generate revenue from advertisers on their sites. Some search engines claim they are larger, faster or more selective than others. Some rate the
match to your keywords, and many offer options of listing just the
web page title or alternatively, a summary or several lines of text
to describe the web site.
Learn to use advanced techniques to refine your internet research requests.
Each search engine offers tips on how to use compound searches. For
example, in Infoseek, typing in women business owners
(without quotation marks) will return all pages about either
women or business or owners, whereas entering "women business
owners" (with quotation marks) will limit the search to
pages with those three words together. If your search is unsuccessful,
try again with alternative words or word orders. Use compound searches
using and, not, or near to limit the search. The syntax
of each search engine can vary, so each site provides its own tips,
oftentimes located in the "Help" link.
Some internet re-search engines claim that they will locate related web
pages using concept searches, even if the exact words
you entered don't appear on the web page. Some offer related topic
options or allow for weighted terms that allow you to define which
keywords are most important to your search.
These sites handle concept searches:
It can take a long time to repeat a search when trying out different
internet re-search engines. Metasearches look through several search
engine databases at once, returning a merged list of results. Because
regular search engines don't include every web site in their individual
databases, you may discover web sites listed in databases you don't
regularly use if you use a metasearch engine.
Check out these metasearch engines:
What's New?
Thousands of new sites are added to the Web every day and certain lists specialize in promoting these new web pages. What's New Too, for example, posts sites quickly without filtering for
quality, whereas Google, Yahoo and MSNindex new listings that
are mainly multi-level, content rich sites.
Check out these search engines to see the newest sites:
- Clusty.com (formerly Vivisimo.com)
Enter a search term, and Vivismo will not only pull back matching responses from major search engines but also automatically organize the pages into categories. Slick and easy to use.
- Dogpile.com
Owned by InfoSpace, Dogpile sends a search to a customizable list of search engines, directories and specialty search sites, then displays results from each search engine individually.
- Mamma.com
Founded in 1996, Mamma.com is one of the oldest meta search engines on the web. Mamma searches against a variety of major crawlers, directories and specialty search sites. The service also provides a paid listings option for advertisers.
For something very cool, try the Copernic Desktop Search Tool. It even comes in a version for private branding for ISPs and major portals.
- Copernic metasearch engine
Most internet re-search engines have directories that allow you to select
a general category or topic from their list and then search for keywords
within that category or topic. Examples of categories are travel,
health, sports, business, companies, entertainment, education,
etc. By indicating that you want to search for your keyword(s) in
only sites that are included in one of those categories, you have
the ability to be more specific in your web research.
For example, if you wanted to find sites related to dance performances, you could limit your search for dance to the "entertainment" category. That way, you wouldn't have to sift through sites for
dance academies and training.
One of the largest and most popular directories, Yahoo,
allows you to see how relevant a site is to your subject area by
ranking the match to your set of keywords. The most likely match
is listed first, the next likely is listed next, and so on. With
directories like Magellan Internet Guide you can choose to
list sites that exclude mature content.
Check out the directories (sometimes called web guides)
in these search tools:
Locating Email Addresses
Yahoo!
People Search is a free database of millions
of email addresses, phone numbers and home addresses. You
can enter a person's name and other identifying information,
such as a state name or Internet service provider (ISP),
to narrow your search.
Searching for Software
You can locate and download a great deal of free software, demo software, and software upgrades over the Internet. These programs, or files, are stored on web server computers that allow you to make a copy on your computer using "file transfer protocol" or FTP.
This site has free software downloads:
Use newsgroups in your internet business research study
Because there are so many newsgroups in so many locations, the ability to search for newsgroups addressing specific topics is very helpful.
One newsgroup search engine is Google News. Additionally, many general search engines include newsgroup
categories in their directories, with useful options for specifying
your precise range of limitations.
Many text online resources, especially those of universities, were first organized into "gopher" sites prior to the development of the World Wide Web. (FYI, gopher is the name of the mascot of
the University of Minnesota where the protocol was developed.)
In a gopher site, files and folders appear but the interface that guides a user through intuitive paths to the specific information desired is lacking. Migrating old information from the gopher
format into the newer format takes time. Although many gopher sites
have been migrated into more modern Intenet sites, some useful sites
have not yet been updated. Familiar search tools like Archie, Jughead
and Veronica still exist for searching gopher sites. Gopher sites
can also be searched using some web directories.
What's in a name?
Once you've located a web site, can you trust what you find there?
You should consider the source of the information with the same
criteria you would use for any written material. You may be able to ascertain some information about the site by looking at the top level domain name (appears at the end of the URL):
.gov for government
.edu for education
.org for non-profit
.comfor commercial sites
.net for commercial technology-related sites
Other top level domain names have been established to further differentiate web site types. Most countries have their own geographic top level domains, such as .ca for Canada and .us for the United States and .tv for Tuvalu. generally, you do not to be a citizen of these countries in order to qualify to purchase the country domain, although some nations do have some restrictions on ownership.
Often web page addresses that use the ~ (the "tilde" mark) followed by a personal name indicate that they are personal web pages stored on a commercial ISP, and thus represent just one person's opinion, similar to the way that most blogs or MySpace or Facebook pages do.
No perfect search tool exists, but if you make use of the tools available, you can find almost anything in the online world.
Happy hunting!
Click here to see how Strategic Alliance approaches marketing on the Internet.
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