Business Information Key Starting Points & Search Tools

Business Information Key Starting Points

General Business Portals

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

 Cross Sector Lists

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

Country Specific

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

News Sources

General and multi-source sites

13. Accoona www.accoona.com
14. BBC News www.bbc.co.uk/news/
15. Google news.google.co.uk
16. LexisNexis www.lexisnexis.com (priced)
17. Moreover RSS feeds w.moreover.com/site/products/ind/rss_feeds.html
18. Silobreaker www.silobreaker.com
19. Yahoo News www.yahoo.co.uk

Finding individual newspapers

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

Telephone Directories

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

Company Directories

23. HotFrog www.hotfroguk.co.uk
24. RBA Company Directories www.rba.co.uk/sources/directs.htm

Official Company Registers

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

Trade Associations

28. Trade Association Forum (TAF) www.taforum.org

Chambers of Commerce

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

Market Research & Statistics

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

Market Research Aggregators

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

Direct Marketing

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

Stock Markets

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

Government

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

Biographies & People

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

Search Tools

General Search Tools

Ask www.ask.com
Exalead www.exalead.com
Gigablast www.gigablast.com
Google www.google.com
Yahoo search.yahoo.co.uk
Windows Live www.live.com

UK

Mirago www.mirago.co.uk
Red Hot Chilli www.redhotchilli.co.uk
Seekport www.seekport.co.uk

"Meta" Search Tools

Clusty www.clusty.com
Jux2 www.jux2.com
Intelways www.intelways.com

Specialist Tools

Scirus www.scirus.com (science, biomedical)
Windows Academic Live academic.live.com
Ingenta www.ingentaconnect.com
TechXtra www.techxtra.ac.uk
Google Scholar scholar.google.com

Blogs

Ask Blogsearch www.ask.com
Blogpulse www.blogpulse.com
Google Blogsearch www.google.com/blogsearch
Technorati www.technorati.com

Discussion lists

JISC Mail www.jiscmail.ac.uk
Buslib-L
http://list1.ucc.nau.edu/archives/buslib-l.html

1. 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.
   
2. Try and imagine how your perfect page would look and search for terms you would like to appear in that page.
   
3. Use double quote marks around phrases to look for words immediately next to one another, for example "air quality"
   
4. Repeat the most important term or terms in your search one or more times.
   
5. Change the order of the words in your search strategy to see a different set of results. Search engines tend to 'think' in phrases.
   
6. 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.
   
7. Limit by type of file or format, for example PDF, Word, Excel, RSS.
   
8. 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.
   
9. Make use of the Boolean operators AND, OR, NOT where appropriate.
   
10. Have a look at Advanced Search in your favourite search tool for a greater range of options.