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Keeping Good Company: quality business information on the web

UKeiG, UWE, Bristol Karen Blakeman, 8th September 2011

Karen.Blakeman@rba.co.uk twitter.com/karenblakemanhttp://www.rba.co.uk/

Business Sources www.rba.co.uk/sources/

Presentation available at: http://www.rba.co.uk/bi/

Outline for the day

• Mixture of talk and practice

• Ask questions as we go along

• Follow me on your computer as we go through the sites or wait until the practical sessions – I leave it to you to decide (presentation at http://www.rba.co.uk/bi/ )

• Sites that are mentioned (and more) are at http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/

• Finish off with top tips and sites (from you)

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Recommended reading

• Business Information Sources: A Beginner's Guide (Paperback) by Christine O'Hare

Publisher: Facet Publishing (18 Mar 2007)

ISBN-10:1856046036

ISBN-13: 978-1856046039

• Much of the content is still relevant

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Why not just Google for business information?

• Content of many business resources not searched by Google, Bing etc.– information held in databases

– password protected even if free

– priced and subscription services

• Best source of information may be way down your results list

• Google personalises and “tailors” content depending on your location, computer, browser, past searches, your social network, what you had for breakfast.... and anything else it can think of to mess up your results!

• More effective to go direct to relevant starting points and known sites

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Some real enquiries

• I‘m involved in a foreign merger with a take-over of an American company called [name deleted] by a Japanese company. The regulators dealing with the merger are called Eastern Equity Division. They have told me that before I can receive my funds for the sale of the shares I need to pay first a 28% offshore withholding tax. Is this correct in a take over situation? thanks.

• Everything on fish and chip shops in Reading and surrounding area. Location of premises, photos of the neighbouring premises and location, what’s on their menu, prices charged by each one, amount of traffic through the door by day and time slot – and I need it today

• Having double glazing installed. Which companies are likely to be still in business over the next couple of months

• TV advertising spend forecasts up until 2015 for UK, France and Germany

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Free vs. Fee

Free

• Company information not comprehensive, search for companies by name/number one at a time

• Anonymous statistics, total market/industry figures

• Current news - free text searching, many key industry publications not free, difficult to focus search

• May be limited in coverage, time span

Fee

• Full company accounts, historical data, search by multiple criteria, analysis and report features

• Detailed market share by company name, product/brand

• Indexed content, easier to search for historical information by event type, more flexible search and print options

• More likely to be comprehensive and have more extensive archives

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Social media and professional networks

• Part of the web, included in search, infiltrated most of the digital world

• Where people and organisations share, discuss, comment and ask questions

• It is where the conversations are happening

• It is where a lot of marketing takes place

• Used for research, competitor intelligence, reputation monitoring

• Google and Bing automatically incorporate social and professional networks, blogs, Twitter etc in results

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General starting points

• Business Sources on the Net http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/

• BL - Business Essentials on the Web – http://bl-business-essentials.wikispaces.com/

– “a one-stop shop for website listings for entrepreneurs and SMEs, covering topics such as ‘business planning’, ‘grants and finance’, ‘marketing and PR’ as well as industry specific pages.”

• SCOTBIS (Scottish Business Information Service) http://scotbis.nls.uk/

• Biznar – federated search http://biznar.com/

• FITA http://www.fita.org (links do not seem to be checked so some old entries no longer work)

• Alacrawiki Industry Spotlights (but does not seem to be updated any more) http://www.alacrawiki.com/

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Company information

• Ownership, structure, accounts, activities, news

• Availability depends on– type of company

• sole trader

• partnership

• “privately” owned

• limited liability e.g. Ltd, LLP

• companies with publicly traded shares e.g. PLC

– business size (large, medium, small)

– country

• state or region within the country

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UK Companies Act 2006

• Some of the main changes:– memorandum of association now only needs to state that the

founders of the company wish to form a limited company

– directors no longer need to apply to withhold their private address, for example if they believe they may be targeted by activists. Can now choose to supply a “service address”

– requirement to have a company secretary removed

• UK Companies House– http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/

– details of registration and filing requirements

– examples of documents

– WebCHeck - search for companies for free, some information free, accounts and other documents priced

– free Disqualified Directors search

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Exemptions

• For UK small and medium sized enterprises

• May prepare and file abbreviated accounts

• Must fulfil at least two of the following conditions to qualify

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• Exemptions not available to public companies, banking, insurance or shipping companies

Small Medium

Turnover not exceeding £6.5m £25.9m

Assets/balance sheet not exceeding

£3.26m £12.9m

Average number of employees 50 250

Total exemption

• “Total exemption small” means that a company is qualified to trade as a "small company" and therefore can submit abbreviated accounts and does not need to have the accounts audited

• “Total exemption full” means that the company is exempt but that it has chosen to file full accounts

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UK filing requirements

Small companies

Medium companies

Large companies

Balance sheet Abbreviated balance sheet with notes

Full balance sheet

Full balance sheet signed by a Director

Profit and loss Not required Abbreviated profit and loss account

Full profit and loss account

Turnover Not required Not required Required

Auditor report Special auditor report if required

Special auditor report

Required and signed by an auditor

Director report Not required Required Required and signed by an officer of the company

Notes to the accounts

Not required Required Required

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• UK Companies House - Webcheck– http://www.companies-house.gov.uk/

– free, subscription, and document pay per view options

– documents £1 each

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Company Check

• http://companycheck.co.uk/

• UK companies

• Uses Companies House data

• Provides 6 years of figures and graphs for Cash at Bank, Net Worth, Total Liabilities and Total Current Liabilities free of charge

• Monitor company for financial changes and when new accounts are filed – email alerts (free)

• Lists directors of a company– links through to Company Director Check

– http://company-director-check.co.uk/index.php

– can see past and present directorships for a person

• Part of UKData.com who can supply official documents, credit reports and detailed directors’ reports for a fee

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http://companycheck.co.uk/

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http://company-director-check.co.uk/

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http://www.ukdata.com/

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http://ukdata.com/help/director-reports/director-report-content

Bizzy

• http://bizzy.co.uk/

• Uses Companies House Data

• Also some free information on European companies

• Free credit rating displayed for companies with a score of more than 30 (free registration and sign-in required).

• Lists directors for all companies plus other companies of which they are a director (but not for small companies)

• For larger companies lists peers and industry competitors

• Supplies official documents and credit reports for a fee

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http://bizzy.co.uk/

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http://bizzy.co.uk/

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Director searches

• Make sure you have the right person!– Tom Bloggs director of Tom Bloggs Ltd may not be the same as

Tom Bloggs listed at Companies House

– Tom Bloggs director of Tom Bloggs Ltd may be listed as Thomas Bloggs.

– Tom Bloggs listed as a director at Companies House could be someone completely different

• Multiple IDs for the same directory– quite common and does not denote anything untoward

– Companies House has tried to amalgamate IDs but not managed it completely

• Search on a director can reveal unusual patterns e.g. the setting up of a new company a few weeks or days before the current company goes into liquidation

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Company documents

• May need to look at original companies house documents– cost £1 each and there

can be lots of them, need to decide which ones you really need

• Credit reports may be more useful, usually include any CCJs (County Court Judgments)

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County Court Judgments (CCJ)

• Claims made against an organisation or individual by another organisation or individual

– for example failure to pay an invoice

– failure to complete work despite having been made

• If a county court judgment is paid in full within one month of the judgment date it is removed from the register

• If settled after one month the claim is marked as “satisfied” and stays on the register for 6 years

• Registry Trust - CCJs, court orders & fines

– http://www.trustonline.org.uk/

• London Gazette – insolvency data, public notices

– http://www.london-gazette.co.uk/

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CCJ status

• JG - CCJ is still an active judgment

• SS - CCJ has been satisfied (paid).

• “set aside”

– did not receive the original claim form

– moved house and not had post from previous address.

– an order was made against you in your absence in certain circumstances

– wished to put in a defence but were unable to do so

– there may be an error in the judgment.

– the proceedings did not follow the court rules.

• http://www.insolvencyhelpline.co.uk/debt_factsheets/how_to_set_aside_a_judgment_in_the_county_court.php

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Official company information – other countries

• Lists of official company registers

– Official Company Registers

• http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/registers.htm

– Company registration around the world

• http://www.commercial-register.sg.ch/home/worldwide.html

– Companies House Links

• http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/links/introduction.shtml#reg

• US – listed companies

– SEC Edgar IDEA – Interactive Date Electronic Applications

http://www.sec.gov/edgar.shtml

• Canada - listed companies

– SEDAR http://www.sedar.com/

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European Business Register

• Gateway to official company information in 23 European countries

– www.ebr.org

• UK distributer is GBRDirect

– http://www.gbrdirect.co.uk/

• Priced service

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Skyminder• www.skyminder.com

• Pulls together company information from a variety of sources from across the world

• Registration required, free to search but many documents are priced

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Examples of problem areas for the researcher

• Switzerland– only banks, insurance companies and companies traded on the

Swiss stock exchange are required to provide financial statements

• Cayman Islands– “The Registrar of Companies can only release the name and

type of company, its date of registration, the address of the registered office and the company’s status. Disclosing any other information is prohibited unless requested by a law enforcement agency.”

• British Virgin Islands– “A company is not required to file its register of directors, register

of members, register of charges or an annual return with the BVI Registrar of Corporate Affairs.”

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Databases for information on smaller companies

• Confirm contact details using telephone directories

– http://www.teldir.com/

• BvD Mint Free Directory search

– http://www.bvdinfo.com/

– only basic contact details free of charge, additional information priced

• Directories such as

– Applegate http://www.applegate.co.uk/

– Europages http://www.europages.com/

– solusource http://www.solusource.com/

– Kompass http://www.kompass.com/

– see also the list of directories at “Company and Telephone Directories” http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/directs.htm

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Databases for information on smaller companies

• FITA – http://www.fita.org/ and select Really Useful Links from the left

hand menu and then Business Directories and Trade Information

• Import/export directories– Sometimes have more information about small companies than

official company registers

• size, number of employees and turnover

• contact names e.g. marketing director, sales director, export director

• export markets, sectors/products exported

– Search using export directory combined with country and/or industry sector

• e.g. export directory switzerland

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Publicly traded companies – share prices

• Free– current share prices delayed by 15-30 minutes

– real-time prices if you have a share dealing account with a broker e.g. TD Waterhouse (http://www.tdwaterhouse.co.uk/.)

– only cover companies currently listed on the exchange

– some historical data as charts or figures (e.g. Yahoo Finance and Google Finance)

– Yahoo and Google cover major stock markets

– go direct to the stock exchange web site

• Priced– for more detailed analysis

– full historical data

– stocks no longer traded or merged with another company

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Company financials - selection of priced services

• Bureau van Dijk (BvD) http://www.bvdinfo.com/

• Corpfin http://www.companyquery.com/

• Dun and Bradstreet http://www.dnb.co.uk/

• Factiva http://www.factiva.com/

• Hoovers http://www.hoovers.com/

• ISI Emerging Markets Research, News, M&A, Statistics, Economic Indicators, Islamic Finance http://www.securities.com/

• LexisNexis http://www.lexisnexis.com/

• Perfect Information - http://www.perfectinfo.com/

• Skyminder - http://www.skyminder.com/

• Thomson Reuters - http://thomsonreuters.com/

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Share prices

• Yahoo Finance (major stock markets only)– http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/

• Google finance (US, UK, Canada, some European stock markets, Australia, Hong Kong, China)– http://www.google.co.uk/finance

– http://www.google.com/finance

• FT.com – Markets, Equities section

• Go direct to the stock market site– RBA Stock Markets and Share Price Information

– http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/stocks.htm

• Priced services – FT, Reuters, DataStream, Bloomberg

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Yahoo Finance

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Google Finance

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Historical annual reports – SCoRe

• http://www.score.ac.uk/

• SCoRe (Search Company Reports)

• Catalogue of printed company reports, both current and historic, held in UK libraries

• Libraries that hold copies of the reports are listed together with the earliest and latest years of a collection’s holdings

• A good place to pick up clues on past corporate relationships

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Types of companies & company formations

• CorporateInformation.com - Company Extensions and Security Identifiers– http://www.corporateinformation.com/Company-Extensions-Sec

urity-Identifiers.aspx

• Types of business entity – Wikipedia– http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Types_of_business_entity

• Company Formation Survey 2011– http://www.offshoreinvestment.com/survey11/index2.html

• Doing Business - Measuring Business Regulations - World Bank Group– http://www.doingbusiness.org/

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Mailing lists

• RBA Direct Marketing– http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/marketing.htm

• MarketingFile.com– http://www.marketingfile.com

– wide range of mailing lists

– free searching of lists

– can test out a list by selecting first 50, 100 etc. results

– pay as you go

– Help desk very good at pointing you in the right direction

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Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A)

• Search free news on the web (e.g. http://news.google.co.uk/) using keywords

• Detailed information on rumours, deals in progress and completed deals usually priced

• Mergers and Acquisitions– http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/manda.htm

• BvD’s Mergers and Acquisitions Portal – http://www.mandaportal.com/– news, features, summaries and basic deal information are free

of charge– free reports reviewing recent activity in M&A– free reports discussing industry sectors where there is increased

activity– links into the Zephyr database – full reports on deals are priced.

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Mergers and Acquisitions Portalhttp://www.mandaportal.com/

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LinkedIn.com

• Companies as well as people (need an account to search within LinkedIn)

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Who owns a website?

• http://www.domaintools.com/ good starting point for identifying who owns a domain name but....– may be hiding behind an agent

– may be using a service such as Privacy Protect (http://www.privacyprotect.org)

– if in the UK and an individual with a personal page then contact details other than name are not publicly available (Data Protection)

• Run a Google or Bing search on the ‘registrant’ or agent and see if you can find out anything more about them

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Domaintools check on rba.co.uk – good news

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Domaintools check on easterned.org - bad news

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Statistics and industry data

• Free– government statistics

– industry overviews

– executive summaries

– press releases

– trade press - possibly

• Priced for– industry specific market shares

– named companies

– brand names

– detailed rankings

• When carrying out research often have to use data from different sources

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Bits and pieces from everywhere?

• Is there a problem?• Not necessarily but

– must be aware of the context• why and how was the original research conducted• what sources were used• when was the data gathered

– free resources may take information out of context• press releases and news articles focus on single issues• background and methodology often missing• may be several times removed from original research or data

collection

• Multiple free sources are often used to build a picture of a market piece by piece

• Not comparing like with like

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Statistics and industry data

• Use advanced search options to limit your search to file types or format:

– pdf or doc/docx for government or industry/market reports

– xls/xlsx for data and statistics

– ppt /pptx or pdf for presentations

• Search in both Google and Bing for a comprehensive search

• Docjax – http://www.docjax.com

– searches PDF, PPT, DOC, XLS in Yahoo/Bing and Google

• Looking for experts on a topic, presentations, general background on a subject, information on an organisation?

– advanced search ppt or pdf format

– Slideshare http://www.slideshare.net/

– Slidefinder http://www.slidefinder.net/

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Slideshare.net

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Search: biofuels UK public transport

Slidefinder

• http://www.slidefinder.net/

• Identifies individual slides within a presentation

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Zanran

• http://www.zanran.com/

• Zanran – a new data search engine– http://awareci.wordpress.com/2011/04/21/zanran-a-new-data-searc

h-engine/

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Statistics and industry data

• Google Numeric range search– can be weights, distances, years, prices

– use Advanced Search screen

– or the search box on the Google home page

– search term(s) first value..second value unit of measurement

• Examples:– beer per capita consumption uk 2008..2011

– TV advertising spend forecasts UK 2012..2020

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Starting points for statistics

• Statistics Sources– http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/stats.htm

• Official Statistics on the Web– http://www.offstats.auckland.ac.nz

• UK Official Statistics– http://www.statistics.gov.uk/

– often get better results by running a Google advanced site search

• Welsh Assembly Government StatsWales – http://statswales.wales.gov.uk/

• SCOTBIS (Scottish Business Information Service)– http://scotbis.nls.uk/

• Business Essentials on the Web – Industries– http://bl-business-essentials.wikispaces.com/Industries

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http://www.offstats.auckland.ac.nz/

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UK Official Statistics

• http://www.statistics.gov.uk/

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http://statswales.wales.gov.uk/

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Opening up government data

• http://data.gov.uk/

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New ways of accessing statistics

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Guardian data store - data journalism and data visualization http://www.guardian.co.uk/dataData and analysis on topics that are in the newsLinks to the original datasets are provided

New ways of accessing statistics

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Guardian World Government Data http://www.guardian.co.uk/world-government-data

Assessing quality of visualisationshttp://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/sep/27/uk-transport-national-public-data-repository?INTCMP=SRCH

Look for notes on coverage and how information is collected & analysed

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Assessing quality of visualisationshttp://www.elgin.gov.uk/

Visualisation sometimes highlights problems with the datasets or missing data (note that in this case details of coverage are under Service Coverage)

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Open Data Directory

• http://open.mflask.com/

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Google Public Data Explorer• http://www.google.com/publicdata/

• Future uncertain as Google closes down Google Labs

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Google Internet Stats• Google - Internet Stats

– http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en/landing/internetstats/

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UK Trade & Investment http://www.ukti.gov.uk/

• http://www.ukti.gov.uk/

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Business Essentials on the Web - Industries http://bl-business-essentials.wikispaces.com/Industries

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Cobweb Information - Small business ideas, news & support http://www.cobwebinfo.com/

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Finding market research - aggregators

• Pull together reports from many publishers and make them searchable through a single interface

• Can purchase reports through the one service

• Aggregators may not be comprehensive– many publishers embargo reports for weeks or months

– many publishers withhold reports from aggregators

– check the publisher’s own web site or email them to see if there is additional or more recent research available

– may get a better deal by going to the publisher direct

– use aggregators as an index to see who is publishing on your topic

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Examples of aggregators

• Alacrastore– http://www.alacrastore.com/

• ISI Emerging Markets– http://www.securities.com/

• Marketresearch.com– http://www.marketresearch.com/

• Mindbranch– http://www.mindbranch.com/

• Report Buyer– http://www.reportbuyer.com/

• Research and Markets– http://www.researchandmarkets.com/

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Opinion Polls: Getting the results you want

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhNoUUDeViU

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Exercise

What information do you need to assess the usefulness of

this story?

“40% surveyed say Belgium makes the best chocolate

Switzerland comes 2nd and the UK gets only 11% of the vote”

Belgium

Switzerland

UK

News

• Most newspapers and magazines are on the web

• Free services– may not be complete publication

– may not have archives

– search facilities may be limited

– print stories one by one

• Many news and trade press titles are free but some are priced

• Officially company press releases

• ‘Listed’ companies– major news, developments and changes affecting their operations

have to reported to shareholders via the stock exchange announcements for example UK Regulatory News Service

– Various sources e.g. FE InvestEgate | Company Announcements http://www.investegate.co.uk/

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News

• For tracking down individual newspapers– http://www.abyznewslinks.com/

– http://www.kidon.com/media-link/index.php

• Google News – latest free news usually 30 days

– advanced search options limited and not always reliable

– no source list and sources frequently change

– key industry publications may not be included and definitely not included if subscription

– older and Archive News may be priced

• Use Google news and web search to identify specialist news portals or aggregators for your subject and monitor those direct

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Google News Archive

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http://news.google.com/newspapers for list of scanned newspapers

Google can seriously damage your news

• Experiment by Mary Ellen Bates

• Is Google really filtering my news? - Librarian of Fortune– http://www.librarianoffortune.com/librarian_of_fortune/2011/09/is-

google-really-filtering-my-news.html

• Google can seriously damage your news– http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/2011/09/03/google-can-seriously-

damage-your-news/

• Highlights– 1 story appeared in more than 90% of the search results, another in

70%. Of the remaining 14 stories none were seen by more than 30% of the searchers and most were seen by less than15% of the searchers

– More than a quarter of the stories showed up in only one searcher’s results

– Almost one in five searchers saw a story that no one else saw

– Only 12% of searchers saw the same three stories in the same order

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Silobreaker

• http://www.silobreaker.com

• covers free resources: news, blogs, video, images

• geographical location of stories, people, networks

• use as a starting point for in depth research

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Priced services

• The Times and Sunday Times– http://www.thetimes.co.uk/ http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/ – £1/day or £2/week

• Financial Times (priced for full access)– http://www.ft.com/ – £3.79/week for standard subscription– £5.49/week for premium subscription (includes mobile news reader

& Lex)

• LexisNexis– http://www.lexisnexis.com/ – subscription service, prices on application

• Factiva– http://www.factiva.com/ – subscription service, prices on application– also a pay as you go option

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Alerts

• Email alerts still available on a few news sites and services• RSS now more common

– use a reader such as Google Reader, RSS reader option in Outlook 2007 and later

– pull them into iGoogle, My Yahoo or Netvibes.com

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Blogs and Twitter

• Many experts, academics, researchers, industry gurus have

active blogs

• Great way to tap into expert knowledge especially with new

and innovative technologies and industries

• Essential for competitive intelligence and reputation

monitoring

• But Twitter limited to current data & selected networks

• Twitter up to the minute but skewed view of what is happening

• Blogs – http://www.google.com/blogsearch/ or use the Blogs option in the menu on the left hand side of your results page

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Topsy.com – Web “realtime” search

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SocialMention.com (rather erratic and slow but interesting)

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whostalkin.com

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Blogpulse.com – ‘Trend this’

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What can go wrong?

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What can go wrong?

• iPhone 4 to be recalled: it’s true – the Daily Mail says so– http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/2010/06/27/iphone-4-to-be-

recalled-its-true-the-daily-mail-says-so/

• Phil Bradley's weblog: Incompetent Journalists Richard Ashmore and Barbara Ellen– http://philbradley.typepad.com/phil_bradleys_weblog/2010/06/

incompetent-journalists-richard-ashmore-and-barbara-ellen.html

• Phil Bradley's weblog: Fair Play to Richard Ashmore – http://philbradley.typepad.com/phil_bradleys_weblog/2010/06/

fair-play-to-richard-ashmore.html

• See also: Internet Explorer is for Dummies! Anatomy of a hoax http://www.finditout.co.uk/

10/04/23 www.rba.co.uk 85

Keeping up to date

• BUSLIB-L – business information email discussion list– http://list1.ucc.nau.edu/archives/buslib-l.html

• Scottish Business Information Service http://scotbis.nls.uk/– Twitter alerts @ScottishBIS

– can also set up RSS alerts under What’s New

• Karen Blakeman’s Blog– http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/

• Arthur Weiss– Find It Out: Research secrets and more!

– http://www.finditout.co.uk/

• Annual Online Information Exhibition, London, 29th November – 1st December 2011– http://www.online-information.co.uk/

– extensive programme of free seminars, updates and master classes on the exhibition floor

10 April 2023 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 86