Download Searching the Web for Business Information Useful Links Dublin

Searching the Web for Business Information
Useful Links
Dublin Business Information Centre, ILAC
http://www.dublincity.ie/RecreationandCulture/libraries/Library%20Services/Business_Inf
ormation/Pages/index.aspx
Karen Blakeman:
http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/category/business-information/
Planning a search:
http://www.lib.ed.ac.uk/resbysub/PDF/search_skills_A4_booklet.pdf
Searching Google
Google quick tips: http://www.googleguide.com/advanced_operators_reference.html
http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=134479
http://www.google.com/landing/searchtips/#helpcenter
While http://www.google.com/ is an excellent search engine, like many others it only
retrieves information from a relatively small proportion of web sites. There are many
alternative websites to use, but also meta-search engines, directories, subject listings and
portals, some of which can also search the deep or invisible web.
Where available, always use the advanced search screens, and also check out any useful
tutorials on http://www.youtube.com/, by typing the name of the search engine and then
the terms ‘tutorial OR tips’.
Search Engines
http://hakia.com/is a good, general semantic search engine, which relies on
‘credible sites’ recommended by librarians, representing the most recent information
available. For more information, see http://company.hakia.com/about.html
http://www.findingdulcinea.com/also uses librarians to locate quality sites.
http://www.exalead.com/searchis an excellent search engine with the best ‘advanced
search’ page available.
http://www.quintura.com/is a visual search engine, which groups concepts visually and
often yields useful and unexpected results.
http://www.yahoo.com/is an excellent general search engine, with special features,
including Yahoo finance http://finance.yahoo.com/
http://www.ask.com/ is another excellent general search engine which offers the options
of expanding or narrowing searches.
http://www.alltheweb.com/produces results from a wide range of sites.
Finally, Microsoft’s new search engine, http://www.bing.com/ is still in its Beta phase but
offers useful links very quickly.
Metasearch Engines search several search engines simultaneously. Among the best are
http://www.turboscout.com/, http://www.clusty.com/and http://www.surfwax.com/See
http://www.sc.edu/beaufort/library/pages/bones/lesson12.shtmlfor a guide to Clusty.
Computational search engine
http://www.wolframalpha.com/provides excellent information on companies and economic
data. Instead of searching the web and producing a list of websites, wolframalpha
searches key, quality sites and assembles their results in one page.
For an up-to-date list of search engines, try http://www.philb.com/webse.htm
The Hidden / deep / invisible Web is often where the best information is to be
found; http://oedb.org/library/college-basics/invisible-web for information about its size
and how to locate information in it). Try http://infomine.ucr.edu/ or completeplanet.com
which search the hidden web. As much of the hidden information is in databases, try
adding the term ’database’ to your search in any search engine to locate better quality
resources.
Specialist search engines search only useful sites in their sector. For business
publications search engines try http://www.bpubs.com/or www.zibb.com/. Alternatively,
try http://www.business.com/, http://www.alacra.com/ or, for a good listing of business
web sites, see http://www.searchengineguide.com/pages/Business/
For Science search engines, try http://www.scirus.com/ (good for all scientific
information, also good for patents), the excellent U.S. government science site
http://www.science.gov/or http://www.scienceresearch.com/.
Search engines for People include http://www.pipl.com/, 123people.com,
http://www.zoominfo.com/or http://www.cluuz.com/
Looking for Companies, try http://www.zoominfo.com/or http://www.wolframalpha.com/
Search engines for Countries, try http://www.philb.com/countryse.htm
Directories allow you to drill down from broad categories to narrower to find useful
sites. See the Open directory project at http://www.dmoz.org/ or try
http://www.completeplanet.com/.
Subject listings help you find information on specific topics. Try
http://www.bubl.ac.uk/for all sources and
http://www.uea.ac.uk/menu/acad_depts/mth/ocean/vl/by-subject.htmlfor oceanography.
Portals, also known as subject gateways, provide entry to many useful sites on countries
or subjects. To see country portals, see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_country_portals and for a business portal, see
http://www.intute.ac.uk/business/or http://www.german-business-portal.info/. For a
wide-ranging list of useful portals, see
http://www.hw.ac.uk/libwww/irn/pinakes/pinakes.html
If you find a really useful site, use http://www.insuggest.com/ to locate similar sites.
To keep up to date with new search engines or new features of existing ones, see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engines_list