Google is now showing detailed nutritional facts for food. Type in the name of a food and Google brings up a side panel to the right of the standard results showing images, Calories per 100gm, levels of fat, cholesterol, carbohydrate, protein and selected vitamins and minerals.
You can bring a specific nutritional fact to the top of the results by including it in the search, for example iron in spinach.
Typing in just the name of a food works in most cases but for some you have to be more specific to pull up the facts. Butter and olive oil are two where you have to include additional terms, for example calories. It also does not have facts for the more unusual foods such as scorzonera and salsify.
The general description is taken from Wikipedia. The sources for the facts include USDA (US Department of Agriculture) so the figures for Daily Values may not be the same as the EU Recommended Daily Allowance.
Company Check (http://companycheck.co.uk/) and its sister website Company Director Check are two of the more popular services on my business and search workshops. They repackage official information from Companies House and provide much of it free of charge. I first reviewed them in 2011 (http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/2011/07/20/company-information-company-check-gives-more-uk-data-for-free/ and http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/2011/11/14/free-uk-company-information-company-director-check/) and since then there have been many updates and additions. A recent change is that company and director information have been pulled together on the Company Check website making it easier to flip between companies and directors. Data on companies in Ireland is also now available.
Companies and directors can be searched from the same search box. You then select the appropriate entry from a list of possible matches. The company summary is free of charge and includes a business overview, data on its status and business activities, and a list of trading addresses.
Also free of charge are the accounts and list of directors but you have to register (free of charge) to view the information. There are options for logging in with your Facebook, Twitter or Google account but if you prefer you can register a user name and password.
Five years of key financials (cash at bank, net worth, total current liabilities and total current assets) are shown as graphs and more detailed information is displayed in the Company Accounts Table.
The financial statements submitted to Companies House can be downloaded free of charge as PDFs. Other documents lodged at Companies House such as “Change of director’s details” or “Allotment of securities” are listed under the Documents tab and are £2 each.
The Credit Risk information (risk score, credit limit, payment data and key factors) and Charges (mortgages and County Court Judgments) are priced. For a single company the price is £4.99 + VAT, which gives you 30 days unlimited access to all premium credit data on that company for 30 days. If you are likely to be researching more than four companies on a regular basis it is worth upgrading to the All Companies options costing £20 + VAT. This gives you 30 days unlimited access to credit data across every company and director.
Current directors and secretaries for a company are listed free of charge. Previous directors and secretaries are part of the subscription service. The free director profile includes an overview, their registered details and a summary of the companies of which they are or have been a director. This can be more informative as a way of identifying connections between companies and other directors than looking at the company records in isolation. The full director report reports are £8.99 and include credit risk, CCJs, mortgages and charges, and a summary for each current appointment with key information taken from the associated company report.
For both companies and directors you can set up free alerts and add them to a dashboard. This is an easy way to compare results for companies, with negative and positive changes in key financials shown as red or green arrows pointing up or down.
Company Check is not the only service providing free access to some of UK Companies House and Ireland company data. DueDil (http://www.duedil.com/) and Bizzy (http://bizzy.co.uk) are two others that are worth looking at. I understand, though, that Company Check is working on additional services that are due for launch in the next few months. It will be interesting to see what they come up with.
Tags: Companies House, company information, CompanyCheck, Ireland, official company information, UK
Picture the scene: an obviously distressed researcher is hunched over a computer screen, sobbing hysterically. All they wanted was a list of donkey sanctuaries in Surrey. How difficult is that? But Google decided that what they really wanted was a field guide to identifying buttercups. Our researcher tries all the advanced search commands and options they know but to no avail. It seems that Google has locked them into its dreaded live experiments (1) with no possibility of escape, and the information is needed NOW.
There is hope, though. There are other search engines out there. Bing may seem consumer/retail focused, but its list of advanced search commands is great at unearthing serious research information that Google buries at around the 2 millionth entry in your results list. My comparison and summary of search commands at http://www.rba.co.uk/search/compare.shtml lists the Bing commands that you are most likely to need. Or if you just want a no nonsense summary of your topic without all of Google’s personalisation and experiments look no further than DuckDuckGo. But should you even be using Google or similar, generic search engines in the first place? Think about the type of information you are looking for.
For news, RSS feeds are still a great way to pull together updates from your favourite newspapers, blogs and websites. Google Reader is about to disappear into a black hole but there are other, better RSS readers out there. I use a desktop client called RSS Owl (http://www.rssowl.org/) but if that doesn’t suit you Phil Bradley has a list of alternatives on his blog at http://philbradley.typepad.com/phil_bradleys_weblog/2013/03/20-alternatives-to-google-reader.html. Or you could try a different approach: create a Twitter list of essential news sources, or use Paper.li to create daily “newspapers” using keyword searches or hashtags. See my own “daily” at http://paper.li/karenblakeman or the paper.li on biofuels at http://paper.li/karenblakeman/1321447614.
Interested in statistics and open data? Try the University of Auckland’s statistics portal (http://www.offstats.auckland.ac.nz/) or the Guardian’s Datastore (http://www.guardian.co.uk/data).
If you are looking for images Flickr.com is an obvious alternative. For photos you can re-use without fear of being dragged through the courts for copyright infringement try Geograph (http://www.geograph.org.uk/) or Morguefile (http://www.morguefile.com/).
And when it comes to free search tools for tracking down open access and research information there are dozens, some of which are listed at http://www.rba.co.uk/search/links.shtml#research.
These and many more are covered in my workshop “Anything but Google”, which is is being held in Newcastle later this month. Further details are on the UKeiG web site at http://www.ukeig.org.uk/trainingevent/anything-google-karen-blakeman.
We may not be able to avoid Google completely but there are equally good, if not better, tools available. Take the first step and say “No” to Google.
(1) Just Testing: Google Users May See Up To A Dozen Experiments http://searchengineland.com/just-testing-google-searchers-may-see-up-to-a-dozen-experiments-141570
Tags: Search Strategies, search tools, UKeiG, workshop
It looks as though Google has quietly removed yet another search tool from its menus. This time it is “Sites with images”, which used to be under “Search tools”, “All results”. Like translated foreign pages I suspect it has been dropped because of low usage. I used it about once or twice a month, usually to identify a building or a landmark that I had seen whilst out and about and to find further information on the subject. I would put in a description, run the search and then apply sites with images. The results gave the usual extracts from web pages together with thumbnails of the images on those pages. It was very quick and easy to use and more reliable than the two alternative strategies.
The first option is just to run the search in images, but because I’m often looking for something along the lines of ‘hotel between Windsor and Maidenhead Thames’ there can be a significant amount of noise in the results. Also, that approach often pulls up Flickr photos, which can sometimes tell me the name of the place, but does not always provide the more in depth information I require.
The second option is to use Google’s search by image option. This enables you to upload a photo, or point to the URL of an image on the web, and look for similar images. The option can be found by clicking on the camera in the search box on the Google images search page.
You are then given the option to point to the URL of an existing image on the web or upload your own. This is not much help if I haven’t taken a photo of the subject, and if I had a URL I probably would not be trying to identify it. There is also the problem that if Google does not find many exact matches it looks for “visually similar” images that have similar patterns, shapes and combination of colours but which may be of a completely different subject. In the example below I uploaded my own photo and Google has found the exact copy that I had previously uploaded to Flickr. None of the visually similar images are photos of the building I am interested in.
I’m disappointed but not surprised that Google has discontinued sites with images. My money had been on one of the other search tools going before this one. As with the disappearance of translated foreign pages I can live without it, but it means I have to spend more time and effort on finding the information. At this rate there won’t be many search tools left on Google so it makes even more sense to become familiar with the alternatives.
Cue a blatant plug for my forthcoming workshop “Anything but Google”! It is being organised by UKeiG on the 27th June in Newcastle. Further details are on the UKeiG web site at http://www.ukeig.org.uk/trainingevent/anything-google-karen-blakeman
Tags: Google, image search, sites with images
When it comes to researching a market or industry sector the major national and international players are generally well covered by the established market research publishers. If you are looking at a highly specialised sector, are interested in smaller companies or just want to know who is doing what in a town or county then direct marketing lists can be the cheaper and better option. The source I often use is a UK based service called MarketingFile.com (http://www.marketingfile.com/). They have been around for a while but continue to update their services and ensure that the databases they offer are regularly checked and cleaned.
MarketingFile’s lists are divided into business and consumer marketing and further segmented by communication channel: postal, email, fax or telemarketing lists. You can drill down further and specify key job roles, industry sectors, geographic areas and company size. For consumer lists you can segment by criteria such as geographic areas, household finances, interests, investments, cars driven and charities supported.
For each list there is information on coverage, pricing and selection criteria.
You have to register to search the lists but registration is free of charge. The search screen makes it easy to select and combine multiple criteria and the number of results (counts), which is sometimes all one needs to know, is free.
The full data is charged on a per record basis and you can also opt to have only those records that include named contacts. If you are on a limited budget or want to test a sample of the data you can request a specific number of records for example 50, 100, 200, 1000.
MarketingFile have extended their services and now offer complementary services such as printing and posting of letters, postcards and inserts. They have a 100% Delivery Guaranteed offer on email and postal lists which offers 50p per item towards your postage for mail “goneaways” and 5p – 10p per item towards broadcast costs for email hard bounces.
It is not always easy to identify the most appropriate list for your research. Rather than waste time trying different lists I’d recommend that you contact their helpline, which is based in the UK. They will be able to give advice on the best strategy for your research or project.
Tags: b2b, b2c, Business Information, business lists, consumer lists, direct marketing, MarketingFile, UK
Update 18th May 2013: Google has now confirmed that translated foreign pages has gone.
“The translate foreign pages feature is no longer offered. Removing features always involves tough choices, but we do think very hard about each decision and its implications for our users. You can still translate entire pages in Chrome. Streamlining enables us to focus on creating beautiful technology that will improve people’s lives.”
While the press were busy reviewing the new Google maps and reporting on the Google I/O event Google quietly dropped translated foreign pages from its search tools menu. Translated foreign pages was a great way of searching for information in a language other than your own. It was invaluable when researching individuals or companies based in another country, or for news and legislation in a language other than your own. You ran your search in Google as normal and then clicked on ‘Search tools’ in the menu above your results followed by ‘All results’ and ‘Translated foreign pages’. If you included a country in your search Google would assume that you wanted information from pages in that country’s language. It would translate your search into that language and then translate the pages it found into your own language. If you did not mention a country in your search it would list the most commonly used languages. This would sometimes change according to your previous choice of languages but you could also add languages to the list.
It wasn’t perfect but it was a great way of finding local content, which is often in a foreign language.
The option disappeared from the search tools menu earlier this week. There was no announcement from Google, which is not unusual, and it was not until a question about it was posted in a Google Groups forum that someone from Google said they would investigate. The answer they came back with does not bode well:
“This feature is currently unavailable, but we’d like to bring the functionality back in the future. I’ll give you updates as I receive them, but for now there’s no time frame for when that will happen.”
There have been similar responses to enquiries about vanishing search features in the past. The Wonderwheel is just one example. All too often Google later admits that the options have been permanently axed. It does seem strange, though, that Dan Russell, who works at Google, recently highlighted translated foreign pages in his blog at http://searchresearch1.blogspot.com/2013/04/ramong-writes-in-with-great-question-i.html
Is there an alternative? Sort of, but it is not as slick.
1. Use Google Translate (http://translate.google.com/) to translate your search into the required language.
2. Copy the translated search and paste it into Google search.
3. If you are using Google Chrome and have enabled the translate option under advanced search settings Chrome will offer to translate the page of results for you. Alternatively, or if you are using a different browser, click on the ‘Translate this page’ link next to a result to view a translation of just that page.
Of course, you have to repeat the procedure for each language you want to use but at least it can be done. All too often there is no alternative at all to search tools and commands that have been banished. Many of us are wondering which one will be next – it is inevitable that there will be a ‘next’ – and what impact it will have on the quality of search results. At present there are still techniques we can use to force Google to run a search the way we want it run but it is getting perilously close to becoming useless as a serious research tool. Time to start investigating other search tools in depth.
Tags: foreign language search, Google, search features, search tools, translated foreign pages
Today’s Google Doodle features a selection of cakes and candles so it must be someone’s birthday, or perhaps a celebration of whoever invented icing sugar, marzipan or whatever else is plonked on top of birthday cakes. You won’t be able to see it, though. I moved the cursor over the image….
…. and it’s MY birthday!
Spooky? Not really. I told Google my birthday when I set up my Google+ account. Unless it has changed since I set up my profile, Google requires you to enter a birthday and I decided to tell the truth. Yes, I have sold my soul to Google+. If all you do on Google is search I usually recommend that you resist being forced into Google+ for as long as possible, but that is becoming increasingly difficult. I decided to succumb because I am freelance and need to market my services to as many people as possible. Google+ dangles many carrots in front of people like me, such as author verification, so it makes sense to do it.
What does concern me is that a fun Google Doodle could blur the boundaries between personal and public information even more than is happening already. Google personalises your search results according to past browsing activity and includes information from your Google+ circles, even if that information is restricted to people within a circle. If you are carrying out a search on behalf of someone else can you share that information? I would not, but it could be argued that if you want to keep something private or semi-private then don’t post it to Google+. Google, though, is clearly experimenting with pulling together private and public information on your search screen. I signed up to a field trial last year that added results from Gmail, Drive and Google+ (Google search to get more personal http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/2012/10/19/google-search-to-get-more-personal/). The personal results were to the right of the usual listing and clearly labelled. But what if everything is combined into a single list? How easy will it be to differentiate between private and public?
You have told Google your birthday and have allowed that to be shared with others, or have you? You can keep it private, but when Google presents you with your own doodle it may encourage a feeling that you are safe and secure. It suggests that everything you see on subsequent screens can be shared.
To quote Alastor ‘Mad-Eye’ Moody (Harry Potter): “Constant vigilance!”
Tags: Google, Google Doodle
Update: Top Tip number 4, Translated foreign pages, has now been axed by Google. See my blog posting Google drops translated foreign pages for another way to search foreign language pages.
Google lived up to its reputation at the UKeiG workshop “Make Google behave: techniques for better search results” and it didn’t take long for it to start presenting different results and layouts for the same query. We went through a vast array of commands, search options and specialist Google tools and by the end of the day we felt we had regained some control, or at least were finding more sensible results. Held in the training suite in the Library at Manchester University the delegates were a mix of information professionals from the private, legal, government and academic sectors. They were certainly not slow in suggesting top tips at the end of the day and came up with 15 instead of the usual 10. Here are the top tips.
1. site:
Include the site: command in your search to focus your search on particular types of site, for example site:ac.uk or to search inside a large rambling site. You can also use -site: to exclude sites from your search. For example a search for statistics on Wales kept coming up with Australian sites mentioning New South Wales. Including -site:au quickly disposed of those.
2. Reading Level
Try ‘Reading level’ if Google is failing to return any research or business related documents for a query. Run your search and from the menu above the results select ‘Search tools’, ‘All results’ and from the drop menu ‘Reading level’. Options for switching between basic, intermediate and advanced reading levels should then appear just above the results. Click on the Advanced option to see results biased towards research. Google does not give much away as to how it calculates the reading level and it has nothing to do with the reading age that publishers assign to publications. It seems to involve an analysis of sentence structure, the length of sentences, the length of the document and whether scientific or industry specific terminology appears in the page.
3. Verbatim
Google automatically looks for variations on your search terms and sometimes drops terms from your search without telling or asking you. This is not always very helpful. Quote marks around phrases or individual words do not always force an exact match or inclusion in the search. If you want Google to run your search exactly as you have typed it in, click on ‘Search tools’ in the menu above your results, then click on the arrow next to ‘All results’ and from the drop down menu select Verbatim.
4. Translated foreign pages
For a different perspective or for information on government policies, companies, people, industries located in another country try ‘Translated foreign pages’. Run your search as usual and click on ‘Search tools’, then ‘All results’ and from the drop down menu select ‘Translated foreign pages’. Google will then give you a list of the most commonly used languages but you can add a language of your own to the list. Select the translation option you wish to use by clicking on the number or results next to the language. Google will then run a translation of your search on pages in that language and then translate the results back into your language. If you have mentioned a country in your search Google will automatically translate and search using the language of that country. Beware, though. Machine translation!
5. Asterisk *
Use the asterisk between two words to stand in for 1-5 words. This is useful if you want two of your keywords close to one another but suspect that there may often be one or two words separating them. For example solar * panels will find solar photovoltaic panels, solar water heating panels. One of the workshop delegates found that placing an asterisk between a keyword and the word ‘report’ significant improved the quality of results when looking for official information, industry or research reports.
6. Personalise Google news
There may be times when you do want personalise information and results. There may be some sections and sources in Google News that you do not want to see or you may want to increase the amount of information on a topic. Sign in to your Google account and on the Google News page click on the cog wheel in the upper right hand area of the page. You should then see options on the right hand side for personalising topics and newspaper options.
7. Date options
In Google web search, use the date options in the menus at the top of the results page to restrict your results to information that has been published within the last hour, day, week, month, year or your own date range. Click on ‘Search tools’, then ‘Any time’ and select an option. Unfortunately you cannot use this with Verbatim but you can use the daterange: command. You have to convert your dates to Julian date format and this is explained at http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/JulianDate.php and it will even do the date conversion for you. It is far easier though, to use a tool such as GMacker date range search at http://gmacker.com/web/content/gDateRange/gdr.htm. Fill in the boxes and on the Google results page apply Verbatim in the usual way.
8. Usage rights for images
If you are looking for images that you can reuse then use the usage rights option on the Image advanced search screen as a filter. First run your search in Google images. On the results page click on the cog wheel in the upper right hand area of the screen and select ‘Advanced search’. Towards the bottom of the advanced screen there is a ‘usage rights’ box. Click on the downward pointing arrow for a list of options that include four “free to use….” licences. Select the relevant licence and Google will limit your search accordingly. Do double check, though, that the licence applies to the image you want to use. Go to the original web page that contains the image and make sure the licence is indeed associated with it and not with a different image on the same page.
9. Image reverse search
If you already have an image and want to search for different sizes, or images that are similar to it, then use the reverse image search. The Google Images search box has a camera icon to the left of the search button. Click on the camera and you will be given the option to either paste in the URL of the image or upload an image.
10. Changing number of results per page
By default, the number of results that Google displays on your results page is 10. If you want to increase this go to http://www.google.co.uk/preferences or click on the cog wheel in the upper right hand area of a results page and click on ‘Search settings’. First make sure that Google Instant predictions is set to ‘Never show instant results’ otherwise Google will ignore your changes to the results per page. Then under ‘Results per page’ click on the required number on the slider bar and then on ‘Save’ at the bottom of the screen.
11. Google Trends
Google Trends (http://www.google.com/trends/) lets you see and compare how often people are searching on terms. Type in your terms separated by commas. On the results page you can further refine your search by date and country. The frequency graph is annotated with news items that may explain unexpected peaks. Trends may show, for example, whether a marketing campaign has been successful and increased the level of awareness of a brand or product, and can also be used to see how competitors are faring in the search popularity stakes.
12. Google’s main index and supplemental index
Google does not automatically search everything it has. It first searches it main index and only includes information from the supplemental index if it thinks that the number of results is relatively low. Increasing the number of search terms and using Verbatim, or any of the advanced search commands, seems to force Google to search both indexes, which explains why you sometimes see more results as try and refine your search.
13. Public data explorer
The Public Data Explorer is one of Google’s best kept secrets. It can be found at http://www.google.com/publicdata/ and allows you to search open data sets from organisations such as the IMF, OECD, IM, Eurostat and the World Bank. You can compare the data in various ways and there are several chart options.
14. Google Art Project http://www.googleartproject.com/
This is a collaboration between Google and over 150 galleries from across the world. You can take a virtual tour of a gallery and zoom in on a painting to see the brushstrokes. You can view paintings and drawings by gallery or by artist. Warning: this is highly addictive!
15. Cycle lanes on Google maps
For all you cycling fans Google Maps now displays cycle routes for the UK. In the UK Google has been working with Sustrans (http://www.sustrans.org.uk/) to include bike trails, lanes and recommended roads. Set your starting point and destination as usual and the directions area on the screen should include a bicycle icon in addition to the car, public transport and walking icons. If you just want an idea of what is available in a particular area click on the Traffic option in the upper right hand area of the displayed map and select Bicycling. Trails are shown as solid dark green lines, dedicated lanes are light green lines and bicycle friendly roads are displayed as dotted green lines.
The Google workshop will be run again in London in October (http://www.ukeig.org.uk/trainingevent/karen-blakeman-make-google-behave-techniques-better-results-0). If you’d rather explore alternatives to Google I am leading a workshop in Newcastle in June on “Anything but Google”! (http://www.ukeig.org.uk/trainingevent/anything-google-karen-blakeman)
Factiva is discontinuing its pay as you go option for occasional users as part of a “strategic refocus”. Instead of an annual fee of $69 plus a per document charge of $2.95, there will now be a fixed monthly fee of $249/month. This allows you to download up to 100 documents a month with additional articles above this limit being charged at $2.95 each. The new pricing will take effect on 30th April 2013 and, for existing customers, will be payable from their next renewal date.
I have not used Factiva for over a year and, to be honest, I haven’t missed it at all. Much of my research is highly specialised and I find that I am using industry specific sources and scientific papers more and more. Nevertheless, it is a great shame that Factiva has taken this step. Many of the people I work with appreciate the quality of the service but few use it often enough to warrant the $249 monthly fee.
Thanks to everyone who sent me details of the changes.
Tags: Business Information, Factiva, news
My latest business information workshop, organised by TFPL, was held yesterday in London. A large chunk of the session was taken up with exploring and discussing web sites but we also looked at how advanced search options and commands can be used to focus on higher quality business information. An edited version of the slides is available on authorSTREAM at http://www.authorstream.com/Presentation/karenblakeman-1775787-business-information-key-web-resources/ and Slideshare at http://www.slideshare.net/KarenBlakeman/business-information-key-web-resources-19252576.
Towards the end of the afternoon the participants were asked to come up with a list of top 10 tips and tricks. Two more were submitted to me by email soon after, so we have a dozen in total.
1. Verbatim
Google automatically looks for variations on your search terms and sometimes drops terms from your search without telling or asking you. Neither of these are very helpful if you are looking for a company or a person. Quote marks around phrases or individual words do not always force an exact match or inclusion in the search. If you want Google to run your search exactly as you have typed it in, click on ‘Search tools’ in the menu above your results, then click on the arrow next to ‘All results’ and from the drop down menu select Verbatim.
2. Reading Level
Try ‘Reading level’ if Google is failing to return any research or business related documents for a query. Run your search and from the menu above the results select ‘Search tools’, ‘All results’ and from the drop menu ‘Reading level’. Options for switching between basic, intermediate and advanced reading levels should then appear just above the results. Google does not give much away as to how it calculates the reading level and it has nothing to do with the reading age that publishers assign to publications. It seems to involve an analysis of sentence structure, the length of sentences, the length of the document and whether scientific or industry specific terminology appears in the page.
3. Guardian Data Store http://www.guardian.co.uk/data
This section of the Guardian posts articles, charts, graphs and maps on stories in the news using official government data, datasets collected and published relevant organisations and sometimes data obtained via Freedom of Information (FoI) requests. Links to the original datasets are provided so that you can download the raw data.
4. filetype:
Use the filetype: command to limit your research to PowerPoint for presentations, spreadsheets for data and statistics or PDF for research papers and industry/government reports. Note that in Google filetype:ppt and filetype:xls will not pick up the newer .pptx and xlsx formats so you will need to incorporate both into your strategy, for example filetype:ppt OR filetype:pptx, or run separate searches for each one. In Bing.com, though, filetype:pptx will pick up both .ppt and .pptx files.
5. site:
Include the site: command in your search to focus your search on particular types of site, for example site:gov.uk. You can also use -site: to exclude a site or group of sites from your search, for example:
potato yields forecasts 2013 site:gov.uk -site:www.gov.uk
to run the search on UK government web sites but excluding the new www.gov.uk site.
6. Duedil chart
Duedil (http://www.duedil.com/) is one of several companies that repackage Companies House data and makes some of available free of charge. The workshop participants particularly liked the company Group visualisations.
Duedil company Group visualisation
7. Company Check http://www.companycheck.co.uk/ and Company Director Check http://company-director-check.co.uk/
Like Duedil, both of these services repackage Companies House data. Company Check provides 5 years of figures and graphs for Cash at Bank, Net Worth, Total Liabilities and Total Current Liabilities free of charge and lists the directors of a company. Click on a director’s name and you are taken to the Company Directory Check where you can view other current and past directorships for that person.
8. RSS feeds
Several of those attending the workshop already use, or are considering using, RSS feeds as a means of monitoring events and companies. Google is closing down Google Reader but Phil Bradley has lists of alternatives at http://philbradley.typepad.com/phil_bradleys_weblog/2013/03/20-alternatives-to-google-reader.html and
http://philbradley.typepad.com/phil_bradleys_weblog/2013/03/even-more-33-google-reader-alternatives.html
9. BL BIPC industry Guides
The British Library Business Information and IP Centre’s industry guides at http://www.bl.uk/bipc/dbandpubs/Industry%20guides/industry.html highlight relevant industry directories, databases, publications and web sites. Excellent starting points if you are new to the sector.
10. Domain Tools http://www.domaintools.com/
A useful tool for identifying who owns the domain name of a web site. Alarm bells should start ringing in your head if the owner is hiding behind an agent or a privacy protection service.
11. GBRdirect http://www.gbrdirect.eu/
A single point of access to the official company registries of 22 European countries. As well as searching for companies your can search company appointments and personnel for some countries, and verify VAT numbers. The amount of information that is disclosed varies depending on the country and details of what is available is included in the price list at http://gbrdirect.eu/priceList.aspx. The information that it finds will be in the original language.
12. Numeric range
This command is unique to Google. Use it for anything to do with numbers – years, temperatures, weights, distances, prices etc. Simply type in your two numbers separated by two full stops as part of your search. For example: world oil demand forecasts 2015..2030
This workshop is being held again on Thursday, 19th September 2013 in London. The content will have changed by then – in fact, some things have already changed! – and participants are encouraged to let us know the areas and topics in which they are particularly interested and areas of research that cause them problems. This enables me to tailor the event to the needs of those attending. Hands-on practical sessions are included so that everyone has a chance to try out the sites and techniques for themselves. Further details of the day are on the TFPL website.
Tags: Business Information, company information, Search Strategies, top tips
