Specialty Searches

Below are tips and suggestions for ways to approach some specialized search types. Try thinking of additional methods after trying these:

Product/Consumer Oriented Searches

Use product-oriented specialty search tools. Use a search tool that supports mixed upper and lower case. Use the quoted product name in the search and join appropriate search terms using the product and company name. imit searches with the .com filter to eliminate references from non-business sites. For product-related announcements, use a domain or URL search option.

Business Research

Job listing/employment sites can indicate whether businesses are growing or not. Search an individual company site and monitor trends over time. Alternatively, search resume-posting services to see if employees are quitting.

Some search tools contain sections titled "Company Profiles" or similar. Try restricting searches to these.

A way to discover business partners is to use the link search option, using the company name in the link text.

Company sites usually have a press release section. Using the domain option, conjoin your text query with a stemmed press* in the domain. Make sure the query includes the company name as well. Save useful queries and repeat over time if desired.

Monitor business news Web sites.

Market Research

For comparative market info, try combining words/phrases for companies or products. For example, try joining "Rice Krispies" and "Captain Crunch", or "IBM" with "Microsoft". Use search tools that support the link, host or domain filters.

People Locating

Use specialty tools like Switchboard. Use search services that support people searches. Alternatively, put the persons full name in quotes in a search engine. The type of search tool used for searches of this type will depend on the information type sought.

Geographic Searches

Try limiting searches by country domains. Use regional Yahoos. Used mixed case for proper place names. Use geography search tools. Try the location options in HotBot.

Document Locating

A lot of information is not indexed because the documents are not distributed as Web pages. When looking for such info, consider document title names plus common file extensions in queries. Use tools that support file type specification.

Recent News

Normal search tools are usually poor sources for recent news. Resources like Time, Newsweek, CNN, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, etc are better sources. Most major magazines and newspapers have a Web presence. Another useful source are Usenet newsgroups or Web discussion forums.

Other Searches

Think outside the box when doing research of a difficult nature. Use whatever resources you can think of that may have the desired information. Use the above examples as inspiration for how to do so.