Using a search engine is a quick and easy way of tracking industry trends, finding potential customers and suppliers, and monitoring the activities of competitors.  It is as simple as typing a keyword into a search engine and sorting through the hundreds, if not thousands, of responses you are likely to generate.  In short, it's the most efficient and cost-effective way of conducting market research for any type of business.

Searching also allows you to keep an eye on your competitors.  Monitoring the activities of your rivals has never been easier.  By checking prices, special offers and promotional messages on a regular basis, you can maintain a competitive advantage by adjusting your business model.

Monitoring the activities of similar companies in other markets, especially those in more advanced countries, also provides useful market intelligence. You can learn about changing customer requirements, product improvements and marketing strategies to get a head start over your competition.

How to Get Started

Firstly, you need an Internet browser, such as Internet explorer or Netscape Navigator, which are programs that allow you to look at and interact with search engines, information and multimedia content on the Internet.  The best way to learn about search engines is to, try one for yourself.  

Here are some of the more popular places to start searching:

• Google: www.google.com
• Altavista: www.altavista.com
• Yahoo: www.yahoo.com
• Kartoo: www.kartoo.com

Listed below are some tips and techniques to help you locate useful search results in the quickest time possible.

How To Conduct an Effective Search

Don't be surprised if you find that the same keyword generates widely different responses on various search engines, as they all use different methods of locating matches to your query.

There are some techniques that should be used across all search engines to ensure optimal results, such as the more specific you can make your keyword or search phrase, the greater the chance of success, for example, if you want to find information about barcode readers, then this is what you should enter; do not just enter the word barcode.

Advanced Search Features

Most search engines provide a link to an advanced search page where you can search for results using some of the following options. Also be aware that these options will vary depending on the search engine that you are using.

• Domain restriction - can be used to conduct searches within a particular domain or country.
  
  
• Date restrictions - can be used to search for pages dependent on a particular date or within a specified time frame.
  
  
• File format restrictions - can be used to search for pages that contain only certain types of media, such as movies (MP3) or pictures (JPEG or GIF).
  
  
• Language restrictions - can be used to limit or expand the results to include languages other than English.
  
  
• Key word location - can be used to limit searches to where the key word is in relation to the document i.e. in the title, text, or links of a page.
  
  
• Phrase search - can be used to find pages that contain a specific phrase, done by enclosing the phrase within quotation marks, such as "barcode scanning devices". 

Refer to the illustration below for an example of simple and advanced search features of Google.

Don't Lose Track of Your Best Sites

Once you have found a website of particular interest, you will probably want to make frequent visits.  The easiest way to do this is to 'bookmark' special pages by saving them to a section of your Internet browser called  'Favourites' (if you're using Internet Explorer) or 'Bookmarks (Netscape Navigator).