Accoona is Back

I spotted this piece of news in the Alacra Blog – AlacraBlog: Accoona is Back.

Accoona was first released in December 2004 and failed to impress me and others. This new version is greatly improved, although the business search is just a D&B search on US companies. It is the News section that I find particularly interesting with its “SuperTarget Your Search” option. Publication coverage is excellent and includes a good range of industry sectors and international, regional and local sources. My standard test search on wind farms for example picked up the Taunton Gazette and Rutland Herald as well as The Guardian, Washington Post and a host of environmental publications.

Results can be sorted by date and relevance but the SuperTarget goes even further and enables you to narrow down your search by publisher, companies and people mentioned in the articles, country and state. The “When published” feature includes an option for “More than 30 days ago” but this does limit you to only those sources that offer free access beyond this date.

This is a worthy competitor to the free offerings from Google, Yahoo and Ask but it currently lacks an Alerts option.

Top Search Tips from Derbyshire – Updated

I am currently in Derbyshire giving a course on Searching Beyond Google. As usual, the group is asked to come up with a list of Top Tips & Sites. This is it!

1. BUBL http://bubl.ac.uk/ A good starting point for evaluated sites and portals covering a wide range of subjects and industry sectors.

2. FITA http://www.fita.org/. Links to sources of information on trade, export/import, business and companies worldwide.

3. Trovando http://www.trovando.it/. Enables you enter your search strategy once and run it in different types of search tools one by one for example web, images, news, blogs, audio, video.

4. Narrow down your search by limiting by filetype for example xls for tables of statistics in spreadsheet format, ppt for presentations on a subject, PDF for official reports or long documents. Available in most of the major search tools.

5. Use http://ranking.thumbshots.com/ to compare the overlap – or lack of it – in the first 100 results from pairs of search engines.

6. Blogs and blogging are worth exploring both as sources of information and as a means of disseminating information and current awareness.

7. BvD free directory http://www.bvdep.com/ for a list of companies by sector and/or country or for tracking down the location of a company and its subsidiaries.

8. Make use of the lesser known features of Google: Synonym search, define:, numeric range search

9. RSS feeds – a technology to be investigated as a means of keeping up to date with events and for SDI (Selective Dissemination of Information).

10. Official Company Registers for information on SMEs (Small & Medium-sized Enterprises).

Three lists for locating registers on the web:

Company registration around the world http://www.hrasg.ch/eng/welt-e.htm
World-wide Registries http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/links/introduction.shtml#reg
Official Company Registers http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/registers.htm