Fine-Tuning Your Search Skills Mary Ellen Bates Bates Information Services www.BatesInfo.com
Dec 23, 2015
Fine-Tuning Your Search Skills
Mary Ellen Bates
Bates Information Services
www.BatesInfo.com
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What we’ll cover:
Seeing 360° degrees of information Real-life example Decision points Tips and techniques
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Seeing 360° of information
Free open web
Fee-based
invisible web
Free invisible web
Fee-based
value-added services
{notice the fuzzy lines}
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Seeing 360° of information
Free open web What you can find through search
engines
Free invisible web What you can find if you know where
to look
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Seeing 360° of information
Fee-based invisible web Pay-to-play databases
Fee-based value-added services Dialog, Factiva.com, LexisNexis, etc.
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Real-life example
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Real-life example
Market research project on the horse feed industry Who are the North American players? What are the brands and how are they
positioned? Routes to market for each manufacturer
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Real-life example
Budgeting my time:
Two hours total
15 minutes – open web
30 minutes – invisible web (both free and fee)
15 minutes – value-added fee-based services
15 minutes – evaluation
30 minutes – chart the results
15 minutes – mop-up
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Real-life example
Open web Throw “horse feed” at a couple of
search engines and see what you get….
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Real-life example
Through the open web, I could: Identify synonyms
Horse / equine / equestrian Feed / food / nutrition / supplements
Identify a few major players Hit those web sites and identify trends,
concerns
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Real-life example
Identify web directories Sports>Equestrian>Health
Care>Nutrition Shopping>Sports>Equestrian>
Healthcare and Grooming>Feed and Supplements
Business>Agriculture and Forestry> Livestock>Feeds>Horse Feed
Drill down in directories
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Real-life example
Free invisible web SEC EDGAR database Annual reports of privately-held
companies Findarticles.com for random articles
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Real-life example
Fee-based invisible web Market research aggregators:
MarketResearch.com MindBranch.com ECNext, etc
Remember to shop around… costs vary wildly for same report!
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Real-life example
Professional online services Got some great articles on trends in
the “lifestyle” and “commercial” feed products
Identified trends in horse owners’ concerns
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Real-life example
Evaluate information Executive summary Mop up – look for missing info-bits
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Decision Points
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Decision Points
Who knows anything about this and who wants to talk about it? Trade associations Government agencies Lobbying organizations Company press releases or product
descriptions
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Decision Points
What kind of search am I doing? Go fee-based if I need: Search sets Field searching Controlled vocabulary indexing Limit by date Limit sources, or search non-English
sources in English
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Decision Points
How far back do I need to go? Popular news/info from the past 1 to 6
months: free Obscure/specialized/trade info: fee Anything from more than 6 months
ago: fee If I need to find it again later: fee
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Decision Points
If I need to find an obscure expert Identify a discussion group E.g., 800 mHz interference – there’s a
Yahoo Group called 800interference
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Tips and Techniques
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Tips and Techniques
Work from a checklist of formats Articles, white papers, statistics,
news, company web sites, etc. Bates’ reference request form
Use the web to identify ambiguities Find synonyms and acronyms Look for low-hanging fruit
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Tips and Techniques
Use HotBot.com to search multiple search engines FAST Google Inktomi Teoma
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Tips and Techniques
What can the open web do best? Point of view Company info Association info Identify ambiguities, synonyms
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Tips and Techniques
What can the free invisible web do best? Government info Company info (some of it is buried) Association info (ditto) White papers, reports
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Tips and Techniques
What do fee-based services do best? Deep research Published articles Value-added output Anything you need to retrieve again
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Tips and Techniques
What do print sources do best? Less-frequently-updated info Info that’s difficult to display Research tools (e.g. Encyclopedia of
Business Info Sources, Fulltext Sources Online)
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Tips and Techniques
Think about your time. It's the most valuable, most scarce resource you manage.
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Mary Ellen offers a free “Tip of the Month” email update.
If you would like to subscribe, just ask ([email protected]) or go to www.BatesInfo.com/tip.html
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Mary Ellen Bates
Bates Information Services
www.BatesInfo.com
202.332.2360