Here are some of the new books we’ve gotten recently…  There are many more!

Superfreakonomics: global cooling, patriotic prostitutes, and why suicide bombers should buy life insurance by Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner.

Scroogenomics: why you shouldn’t buy presents for the holidays byJoel Waldfogel.

Clintonomics: how Bill Clinton reengineered the Reagan revolution byJack Godwin.

The Holy Grail of macroeconomics: lessons from Japan’s great recession by Richard C. Koo.

There are many more!

Google can be a great resource for business research…  but don’t just plop some words into the search box and waste time wading through a bunch of search results.  Here are my top 5 tips for better business Googling.

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5. Think Synonymously

Problem: Let’s say you’re researching the global automotive industry.  You might miss good stuff if you only type “global automotive industry” in the search box.

Solution: Don’t give up after one or two searches, try a variety of searches using synonyms and related words. In addition to automotive, try car and automobile and auto.  In addition to global, try worldwide and international. For industry, try market and business.

Inside tip: Google also has a handy modifier (~) that automatically searches for related words.  Insert the ~ in front of your search terms, for example, type in the search box: ~automotive.

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4. Use Limiters to Overcome Info Overload

Problem: Seems like almost any search in Google can result in millions of results.  In fact, searching on “information overload” gives you almost 3 million!

Solution: Use limiters to create more precise searches.  My top three… Put your search terms in quotes to search for an exact phrase. Use site: to limit your search to specific sites (great for sites that don’t have their own search box) or to specific types of sites (ie: limit your search to .edu or .gov sites). Use the – to exclude words from your search.

Inside tip: Explore Google’s Advanced Search page for more options.   One more limiter… use filetype: to limit your search to specific types of files.  This can be useful for finding financials (filetype:xls), reports (filetype:pdf), and presentations (filetype:ppt).

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3. Try Other Flavors of Google

Problem: Even when using limiters, searching the entire Internet for business research is overwhelming.

Solution: Try Google’s other search engines.  Google Finance provides great company profiles including news, financials, market info, more.  To search for recent business events, try Google News.  Lots of good biz research comes from the government, so try Google Uncle Sam.

Inside tip: If you are searching for info on a public company, type stocks: in regular old www.google.com and then the ticker symbol. For example stocks:mtb.

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2. Get Academic with Google Scholar and Google Books

Problem: There’s a lot of unreliable stuff out there on the web.  Also, for class assignments your professor might require that you only use scholarly, academic resources (also called refereed or peer reviewed).

Solution: Try Google Scholar, a smartened-up version of Google.  It’s great for finding academic and scholarly articles and reports. Also try Google Books, Google’s huuuge collection of digitized e-books.  Who knows maybe you’ll find one the books required for a class there.

Inside tip: Check out the UB Libraries’ tips for using Google scholar.  If you are off-campus, remember to change your preferences so that you can access the good stuff.

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1. Go Beyond Google, Try Business Databases

Problem: Google doesn’t search everything…  there’s a lot of great business research out there that is not findable on Google at all. Plus, some of the good stuff that comes up on Google is not available for free — they want you to pay for it!

Solution: Don’t pay for business research yourself!  UB already pays to give you access to some of the best premium business research out there, stuff that’s not free on Google.  How to find it?  Use the business databases available from the library like Hoovers, Factiva (free Wall Street Journal access!) and Business Source Complete (free Harvard Business Review access!) The full list of business databases is available here, check out the “Top Resources” tab and the “Databases” tab.

Inside tip: A quick way to find UB’s business research databases is to Google “BizBrary” (as in “Business Library”) and click on the top hit.

And remember:  you can always ask me for help.  If you need help finding business research, give me a try!

Eye on the Bailout is a great resource for keeping up on the bailout. The site, maintained by ProPublica, includes a map, timeline and list of recipients of the cash.  You can see in the image above that even Buffalo has received TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) funds: $600 million given to M&T Bank.

ProPublica also tracks where the economic stimulus funding is going, including all of the “contracts, grants and loans that the government has reported awarding.”  About $112 million is making its way to Erie County so far:

If you want to find everything you can about an industry, IBISWorld is a great place to start. IBISWorld provides hard-to-find industry data like market size, major players in the industry, market share, geographic spread, keys to success, and more.

IBISWorld covers 700 industries. Here’s a list of the most popular industry profiles that were downloaded here at UB last month (hmm… video games, beer, fast food – that sounds about right!):

Here’s a sample market share table from the fast food report:

So, go give IBISWorld a try (it’s much quicker and more reliable than Googling!).

Business law (Sarbanes-Oxley)

International regulations

Global banking and financial markets

Risk management, compliance, and governance