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!

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

Here’s yet another “nontraditional” way to gauge the economy…  an article in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin called “Playboy Playmate Curves: Changes in Facial and Body Feature Preferences Across Social and Economic Conditions” explores trends in the measurements of pinups as they relate to social and economic factors.

“Past research has investigated ideals of beauty and how these ideals have changed across time. In the current study, facial and body characteristics of Playboy Playmates of the Year from 1960-2000 were identified and investigated to explore their relationships with U.S. social and economic factors. Playmate of the Year age, body feature measures, and facial feature measurements were correlated with a general measure of social and economic hard times. Consistent with Environmental Security Hypothesis predictions, when social and economic conditions were difficult, older, heavier, taller Playboy Playmates of the Year with larger waists, smaller eyes, larger waist-to-hip ratios, smaller bust-to-waist ratios, and smaller body mass index values were selected. These results suggest that environmental security may influence perceptions and preferences for women with certain body and facial features.”

As a GA working in the UB Office of Science, Technology Transfer and Economic Outreach, here are some resources from the UB Libraries that can assist you with your research:

• Companies… find information about companies and identify comparable companies and competitors
• News… learn about recent trends and developments
• Industries… get overviews of the various facets of an industry and get a sense of the size of the market
• Journal literature… explore business topics in an in-depth manner
• Data… Obtain statistics, rankings, market share,etc

1. Company Information…

Company profiles with quantitative and qualitative info. Find competitors and major players in an industry. Remember the 3 factors that determine the difficulty of company research: public -vs- private, US -vs- non US, parent -vs- subsidiary.

• Best bet… Hoovers

• See also… OneSource, ReferenceUSA

2. News Articles…

Technology industries are continually emerging and evolving — this makes them difficult to research. Keep current with recent trends with industries and companies by monitoring the news media.

• Best bet… Factiva (includes the Wall Street Journal, Barrons, and many other primary business publications)

• See also… LexisNexis

3. Industry Overviews and Reports…

Research from the best tech-related research firms is expensive and hard to come by: Gartner, Forrester, IDC, Frost & Sullivan, Nielsen / NetRatings, Jupiter, and lots of other specialized sources. Here’s what we have access to at UB.

• Best bet… IBIS World

• See also… Faulkners Advisory for IT Studies, S&P NetAdvantage

4. Academic Journal Literature…

• Best bet… Business SourceComplete (includes journal articles plus Datamonitor reports, market research, eBooks, country profiles, more)

• See also… other business journal databases are ABI Inform Global and Business & Company ASAP. For a science and technology focus, try ScienceDirect, ACM Digital Library or IEEE Xplore.

5. Rankings, Statistics and Other Data

• Best bet… TableBase

• See also… LexisNexis Statistical, Business & Company Resource Center,

6. Internet Resources…

Some resources from the free web:

• Research… IBM Research, USC Annenberg’s Center for the Digital Future, Pew Internet and American Life Project, RAND, ClickZ Stats, Morgan Stanley’s tech research.

• Magazines… Technology Review (MIT), HBS Working Knowledge’s Technology Industry, CIO, Business 2.0, Fast Company, Wired.

• Lists… 100 Fastest Growing Tech Companies (CNN Money), Deloitte Technology Fast 500, InfoTech 100 (BusinessWeek), Fastest Growing Techs (Forbes), Canadian Business Tech 100.