I rarely pay attention to corporate press releases due to the amount of commercial content however; the release issued by Strategic Insights, is certainly worth a read.
The consulting firm has done an excellent job in distinguishing strategic intelligence from competitive intelligence. In the release, Alden R. Taylor, Managing Partner of Strategic Insights stated that:
“competitive intelligence focuses on verifying facts and past events, forcing companies to operate in reactionary mode. Strategic intelligence on the other hand, is forward-looking, providing executives with insight into the motives and decision making processes of competitors. Executives can make strategic decisions in advance of a competitive event versus responding with 20/20 hindsight.”
Given the fact that the image of “competitive intelligence” has taken a hit over the years, it is nice to see that someone has tried to clarify the different aspects of the intelligence profession.
Google Bombs are not new to the internet but they have just received publicity lately thanks to newspaper and television reports. By definition, a Google Bomb is “an attempt to influence the ranking of a given page in results returned by the Google search engine, often with humorous or political intentions.[1] Because of the way that Google’s algorithm works, a page will be ranked higher if the sites that link to that page use consistent anchor text. A Google bomb is created if a large number of sites link to the page in this manner.”
You maybe asking why would this be important to internet searchers? Well I bet you that search engine marketers are going to take Google Bombing to another level sooner or lately. When building up traffic is the key to generate revenues, marketers will pull out all the stops when trying to entice visitors to their site via Google.
As a result, internet searchers will have to pay careful attention to the results that Google provides along with the abstracts from the retrieved websites.
Here is a cool tool for individuals who often use RSS feeds to access news.
RSS 2 PDF allows individuals to store content from RSS feeds into a .PDF. The end product is a file with text and images as it appeared online. The screenshot below is the .PDF version of the feeds available on ResourceShelf.
I have spent the majority of my career in the field of competitive intelligence and the one of the most difficult mandates that I had to undertake was explaining the profession to family, friends and believe it or not, and other business professionals.
After all the numerous articles, books and presentations on competitive intelligence, the practice is still associated with “corporate espionage”. I have been wondering how and if the practice can shake this image. Well, large corporations are not helping the cause. I cite the following cases:
- Recently, a former Hewlett-Packard executive accused by the company of stealing trade secrets is now saying that he was instructed by the company’s management to spy on rival Dell.
- In 2001, Proctor & Gamble admitted breaking its own rules on corporate espionage to obtain information on Unilever’s hair care business.
I know that it is very frustrating to professionals which have been working in the field for years to be lumped in with corporate practitioners and contractors that are illegally obtain information on competitors. Every CI professional knows that competitive intelligence does not equal corporate espionage however; are professionals willing to stay within the guidelines which dictates the ethical collection of information?
Back in October 2006, Google acquired YouTube, an online platform to share video content for $1.65 Billion. Starting today, Google will be slowly intergrating content from YouTube in Google Video.
One should be aware that Google Video will be pulling content off the platform due to copyrighted material that has been uploaded to YouTube since its inception. Ironically, it has been rumoured that Google has set aside bags of cash to deal with claims of copyright issues.
To have an example of the copyright infringement issues that may arise in the future, please read, “News Corp. Goes After YouTube Uploader, Misses Forest in the Trees“. The content that is in question are episodes of the popular American television show, 24.
Wikipedia is great. Plug in your keyword(s) and within seconds, you can have access to knowledge. The Wikipedia platform is a great example of users getting to together to collaborate to create content on the web. Unfortunately, there are some individuals that will try to exploit online platforms for commercial gains. Perfect example: Microsoft.
In case you have not heard, Microsoft was caught by the people at Wikipedia for editing content by getting bloggers to log on. Technical articles were “modified” to inaccuracies in Wikipedia articles.
Anyone who really cares about the credibility of Wikipedia, should be concerned. Is it a matter of time before we begin to question the information on commercial products and services?
My brother has asked me to write a short piece for a newsletter on the topic of internet intelligence for young entrepreneurs. Please allow me use this blog posting to draft an outline for the article.
1 - Introduction
- Discuss the research process for starting a business
- The importance of relying on the web for information
2 - Sources
- News sites
- Magazines
- Newsletters
- Blogs
3 - Tools
- Search engine, meta-search engines, directories, blog services
- Content alerts
- Tracking alerts
4 - Budgets
- Free Vs Fee
- Outsourcing
- When should you spend it?
5 - Conclusion
- Risk Vs Rewards
- Guide to implementation
- Tips
I plan on beginning the first draft sometime this week. I will post the entire article when it is published.
Everyone loves meta-search engines. These tools permit internet researchers to query many search engines at once by entering their keyword(s) in one search box.
Zuula is a new meta search tool that is currently in beta testing. It has a very clean search interface and allows individuals to conduct Web, Image, News, Blog, and Job searches. Users can access results from each engine by clicking on tabs that are labeled with the engine’s name. The image below presents a blog search query for the keyword, “Zuula”, requesting results from Technorati.
There is not a doubt that the internet has threaten the existence of the hardcopy version of the newspaper. Instead of handling newspapers, individuals can grab a hold of their mouse to surf onto news sites and portals.
Once again, we see that the newspaper is under attack. According to a study conducted by Nielsen//NetRatings, web traffic to newspaper blogs tripled in December 2006. That being said, what can we expect from owners of newspapers to do if this trend continues? One possiible is to reduce the amount of content available in hardcopy form and allow journalists to use their blog to provide facts, analysis and opinion.
If you believe that valuable news content will be available only on blogs, then what will be the use of obtaining subscriptions to newspapers in paper form and accessing databases with premium content? How important will blog search tools become in the upcoming years?
It always amazing me that some people think that Google is the ONLY search engine on the web. Yesterday as I was listening to radio, the host of my favourite show asked the intern “to Google” a local celebrity name to find a recent published article. After five minutes, the intern was not able to find the article.
If only the intern would have taken his Google blinders off to realize that Google DOES NOT index everything this is on the internet.
In order to become an efficient and successful internet searcher, it is important to have a game plan for the search. The game plan should include a methodology and a collection of tools in which to find information.
