Top 5 Google Tricks for Market Research Professionals
It is quite common for the market research professionals to search for secondary data on Internet. However, getting an accurate and desirable search result is a challenge, even for Google. For this reason, Google has provided a few readymade search commands for advanced users, which can filter results on the basis of input queries. The word ‘advanced’ user may sound geeky but believe me, there is no rocket science in this. Even an average person too can easily use these commands and get benefitted. So are you ready to learn a few tricks which make your search a lot easier and quicker? So here they are:
1. Dot (..) Operator: This operator will help you to find results containing numbers in a given range specified by you. Do remember that there should be no spaces in the query string.
Syntax : text number..number
Example: VAS market research reports $250..$1000
Click the above text and it will return results containing “VAS market research reports ranges between $250 to $1000”.
Uses: When you are searching for a specific market research report and you have a price range or budget in your mind.
2. Wild Card (*) Operator: This operator is also known as the fill in the blanks operator. Each * (asterisk) represents one or more words in a given phrase. Google acknowledges * as placeholder for a single word or group of words.
Syntax : text * text
Example: US Defense Expenditure Oct * 2003..Oct * 2012
Click the above text and it will return results containing “US Defense Expenditure ranges October any date 2003 to October any date 2012”.
Example: mark el*t Zuckerberg
Result will return full name of Mark Zuckerberg.
Uses: When you only remember certain phrases by parts and are not able to recollect the exact words, or you want to include somebody’s name and you are missing out his/her middle/last/first name, then this command will be the right option for you.
3. Site Command: When you want to search something specific within a site, this command will return all the related pages containing your search term.
Syntax : Keyword/Search Term site:URL
Example: Mining Industry site:www.marketresearchreports.in
Result will return pages from the site named marketresearchreports.in which contains mining industry keyword.
Uses: When you are searching for a report or looking for specific data within a site, this command will fetch you results, which can tell you whether the desired data is available within the site, or you have to look for some other website. Indeed a real time saver.
4. News Search: News sites deliver very important and timely information beforehand, related to industries and market. Market Research Professionals always follow their favorite news and PR sites for latest industry information. This command will help you to extract desirable news from the sites that you visit regularly.
Syntax : Keyword/Search Term Source: Site name
Example: Fuel Price Hike source:Times_of_India
Result will return news about Fuel Price Hike from The Times of India Site.
Uses: Very useful when you are writing a report or a blog post on a current topic and you require some quantitative and qualitative data for reference.
5. File Type Command: File type command will let you search files of various kinds of formats. Using this command, you can easily search Acrobat PDF files, Word Files, and Power Point Files.
Syntax : Keyword/Search Term filetype: pdf/ppt/doc/txt/png
Example: 4G Market Reports filetype:pdf
List of PDF reports on 4G Markets will be fetched via this command.
Uses: Very useful when you are looking for sample reports for reference.
Author Box:
Amitava Sen is research analyst working with NOVONOUS. He has been using these commands for many years and by the virtue of these techniques, he has saved lot of his time while doing research work for finding secondary data and market research reports. Your comments and feedback on this article would be appreciated.
Market research
Processing your request, Please wait....
