beyond google - mining the web for company intelligence (day one)

• Tools• Tweet Deck• Seismic• HootSuite

• Who / What to Follow:• Product Managers• Sales Team Members• Directors of Departments• VP’s / CEO’s• Product Aligned Twitter Accounts• Hashtags for Conferences• Topics / Search Combinations

• Indexes:• WeFollow• Listorius• Etc.

• 140 characters doesn’t mean much in isolation

• But 100x140 characters certainly does…

• What you’ll hear:•Who did they just sell to?•Who just publicly “dented” their product?•Who just publicly “praised” their product?•What product did they just launch?•What messages are they pushing at conferences?

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• Twit(url)y• TweetFeel• Paper.li• WorldOfTweets

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• Jive Software

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• Social Networking meets Q/A• Many other sites were predecessors and

are valuable in their own right:• Stack Exchange• Focus.com• LinkedIn Q/A• Yahoo Answers

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• <capture>

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• Reviews, Interview Commentary, Salary Ranges – and even Pictures

• Good validation process for reviews

• Nearly any mid size and up company represented well

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• Job posting aggregator• API for pulling job

posting data

• What is their marketing really saying?• Point at:

• Customer Success Story Feeds• Press Release Feeds• Product Site Feeds• Community Site Feeds• Support Forum Feeds

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• Compete.com, Quantcast.com

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• Sometimes the conversation “only” happened on video• Tradeshow floor interview• Magazine Interview

• A few sites• www.blinkx.com• www.silobreaker.com• www.truveo.com

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• Non Profits – Guidestar.org

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• Yahoo, MSN, Google Finance• Seekingalpha.com – Earnings call transcripts• Investor message boards (boardcentral.com)

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• Ning• GovLoop, etc.

• Board Tracker• Yahoo and Google

groups• SourceCon• IRE• Facebook• Many, many more

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• TinEye• Search for Partner Logos, Company Logos,

etc.• Google Image Search

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• Any mention of “roadmap” on Acme.com’s web site

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roadmap site:acme.com

• Any PDF files on Acme.com that contain “Plan”

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Plan filetype:pdf site:acme.com

• Find pages containing “iPhone” where the page URL contains “review”• I.E. Find iPhone reviews on sites that do lots of

product reviews• reviews.cnet.com

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Iphone inurl:review

• site:www.acme.com• “flubber”

Site:www.acme.com/casestudies/*

• Filetype:pdf, filetype:pptx

• Filetype:vsd

• AROUND(3)• Searching longer length

articles, books, etc.

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• images.google.com• Search for orgcharts - *.vsd

• - <exclude keyword>

• Link:<sites that link to a site>

• Ex: “database” inurl: <“xyz”> site:www.abc.com/* filetype:pdf

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• Google News Timeline• Search for News Quotes,

Videos, etc.• Displayed in a timeline view

by Day, Month, Year• Easily Filter Query “sources”

04/08/23 46http://newstimeline.googlelabs.com/

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• Big Day 1 Graphic

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• Twitter • Search Terms, Hashtag tracking

• Google Alerts• Keyword based alerts straight to your inbox.

• Google Reader• Groups of high traffic feeds for at arm’s length

perusal• Pull in Google News Feeds via RSS• Review of any relevant company published RSS feeds• Search for combinations of product names with key terms

– virtualization, management, security, etc. to bubble relevant articles to the top.

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• Big Week 4 Graphic

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• Competitor Webcasts / Webinars• Recently released case studies• Interviews with key executives• Reviews of new product announcements• Review of Analyst commentary• Review of Video Search Sites – interviews,

etc.• Review of Slideshare for new content• Review of LinkedIn company pages for new

jobs, significant personnel moves• Earnings Calls, Financial Review• Review of Support Forums

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• Customer lists are considered trade secrets and are subject to legal protections

• It’s important to use legal and ethical means to determine a competitors customers

• Inappropriate ways to obtain a list of accounts:• Hiring a competitor’s former employees and

encouraging them to disclose a list of customers• Using a false identity or other fraudulent means to get a

competitor to provide a customer list, a list of customer references, etc.

• Dumpster diving• However, a fair number of customers can be

identified ethically and legally using public sources

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• Ethical sources of competitor customer information• Competitor case studies• Resumes• Job postings• Effective use of web

searches via Google or similar engines.

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• Case studies reveal recent customers

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• Resumes and Social Networking Profiles• Example: LinkedIn Search for XenServer customers

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• Job Postings • Example: Indeed.com search for XenServer customers

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• Search engines• Example: Google search for “powered by XenServer”

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sean@cascadeinsights.com scott@cascadeinsights.com