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Selected simple search tips based on the "Know your documents" principle that

will ease your life. Suitable for business information search.

By Elena Barsky, 2013

Good information is an expensive information found on the Internet for free, legally.

Keywords: information retrieval, search tips

Books (not Google books) & long documents

You want to find a PDF that is a book, contains certain keywords and has a particular length.

These are the elements of your query that can improve the search:

1. Page numbers: if you are looking for a complete book then naturally it must be long

enough. Add a few consecutive page numbers to your query.

2. Think on a phrase that is likely to appear in the book, not only on the relevant

words.

3. Add the word "ISBN". The word "Copyright" is found in brochures too, so ISBN is

better in this case.

4. Year: if you need a more or less recent book than try adding a year or even a few

dates (depending on the book type it may mention a few dates).

"relevant phrase" 200 201 202 203 2011 ISBN filetype:pdf

trade stock foreign exchange tradestation 200 201 202 203 isbn 2010 filetype:pdf

Consider also the words: "chapter 1", "chapter 2", "chapter 3"

You want to find a long PDF, for example that is 15-16 pages long, not 3-4. Add the digits 11,

12, 13, 14, 15 to the query.

Know the documents published by your favorite research and analysis companies

If you like reports by, let's say, IDC, take a look at a couple of sample reports and notice the

constant phrases, such as address, email, URL or other pieces of information, such as

copyright, that appear in all the reports. Add a desired year to the query if required.

Example:

"Speen Street" "www.idc.com" IDC "your phrase" filetype:pdf

If you notice that every document has the same structure and has a phrase such as

"September 2012, IDC Financial Insights" – then one element of your query should be:

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"2012, IDC Financial Insights" filetype:pdf - if you want to limit your research to a certain

year.

If you notice that all "Forrester" documents contain the words "Executive summary", "Figure

1", "Figure 2" – use them in your query.

Prices of competitors

The pricing models of large companies tend to leak into the Internet. Specifically, US

governmental sites occasionally publish the bidding results or budget reports with

interesting pricing information. Your sample query may include the following keywords:

“vendor name” “total cost” “contract award” site:.gov filetype:pdf

“vendor name1” “vendor name2” “total cost” bid / bidder /RFP site:.gov filetype:pdf (or

.doc)

Resources sections

Example: the www.eloqua.com site, like many sites, has a Resources section.

The Aberdeen report was made available for download on the Eloqua site, but the search for

filetype:pdf would not give the desired result.

Look for "Aberdeen Analyst Insight: Enhancing", then access the site, and then click to

download.

This example illustrates that some documents are hidden one layer deeper in the Web, but

are still available for download.

Another example:

QUERY: "IDC Financial Insights Research Paper: Embracing Customer" download

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When you see too many results, start adding words that are likely to appear in the report.

How to ensure that the desired word appears more than once in the documents retrieved?

Example: we are looking for an article on openstack.

Analyze the typical research reports that cover openstack and see what pairs of words are

frequent. Use word pairs such as:

"openstack is" (* the most frequent) "openstack has" "openstack can" "openstack cloud"

Rotate the pairs, you can use just a couple of pairs at once with an additional keywords, such

as the name of the research company IDC, Forrester, Gartner.

Adding the word "Copyright" to the query will help you so spot faster the institution that

stands behind the report. (Look at the snippets).

Google books (beginner advice)

Make sure you search Google books – they have a lot of information for free.

Extrapolations or added-value (beginner advice)

Whenever you can’t find the precise information, try extrapolations. Can’t find the market

estimates for a certain medical device? – See how many patients on average require it per

hospital, per country, per year, check the device costs and make your own calculations. Bring

added value to your client and always suggest an alternative information especially when

covering smaller markets.

Extrapolations are equally useful in revenue search when unavailable.

Sample query: vendor million revenue (if the vendor is small; billion if big) – see every

source, including “fastest growing list”, Hoovers, Manta and Linkedin (for the number of

employees) and make your own estimates.

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TOC (beginner advice)

Learn from TOC’s of reports that are not available for free.

SEC Filings (beginner advice)

SEC filings are a great source of market information quoted by leading companies.