Searching the Web for Company Information
From large corporations to the smallest home businesses, an increasing number of companies are maintaining a web presence.  For very small privately-owned businesses, the internet is now providing a significant source of information where none was previously available. If you have not found a link to your company web site in any of the resources listed in the Corporate Web Sites section of  Finding Company Information on the World Wide Web, then try searching for a site yourself.

Information on the web is accessible in a variety of ways, including directories, indexes, web crawlers and meta searchers.  There are many types of web search engines and each navigates the web in a unique way and has its own set of rules for composing a search.  For more information and links to the most popular web crawlers, see

Web Directories/Indexes  Composed by Erica Lilly, Libraries and Media Services, Kent State University.
 

Major Search Engines   Composed by Erica Lilly, Libraries and Media Services, Kent State University.


Using Metacrawler

Although there are far too many search engines to cover in this web site, examining one of them may better prepare you to use the others.

The Metacrawler is a meta searcher.  Meta search engines do much of the work for you by accepting  one query and sending it out to multiple web crawlers.  Results are sorted and duplicate sites are discarded. Metacrawler, for example,  sends your search string out to Alta Vista, Lycos, Excite, Thunderstone, Yahoo, Infoseek, and Webcrawler and returns the results of all six searches to you.

You will find Metacrawler located at www.metacrawler.com.  Below is a picture of the initial search screen, followed by tips on searching metacrawler for company information.


 

Type in your company name in the box to the left of the search button. Remember there is no standardization on the web, so you may have to try several forms of your company name.  Search General Motors, GM and General Motors Corporation, for example.

The small circles under the search box read any, all and phrase, and substantially alter the way your search is carried out.

Clicking on the any circle will ask metacrawler to search for sites which match any, but not all, of your search terms.  It is the equivalent of the Boolean operator or.  For example, if you search "General Motors Corporation" and select any, you would retrieve sites which include the word general or motors or corporation, but not necessarily all three terms.  This option is useful when searching for one thing or another, for Shell or Exxon, for example.

Clicking on the all circle, will ask metacrawler to search for sites which match all your search terms without specifying order or proximity. It is the equivalent of the Boolean operator and.  If you resubmit the "General Motors Corporation" string, selecting all, you will retrieve sites which include motors and general and corporation.  All three terms must be present, but they may appear anywhere and in any order. This option is useful when you are unsure of the proper company name, for example as with Staples Office Superstore. (Staples, Inc. is the proper name, but the company is also called Staples:  the Office Superstore)

Clicking on the phrase circle asks metacrawler to search for sites which match your search string exactly.  If you resubmit the "General Motors Corporation" search, you will only retrieve sites which include each term in the exact order in which you have typed them.  This option is useful when you are certain of your company name and wish to eliminate irrelevant results.

If you are searching for very specific information about your company, you may add other terms to the company name.  Experiment with searches such as, Exxon and ecology, Nike and sweat shops, and Xerox and annual report.

Searching the web is art, not science -- be creative.  Try a variety of words and names to get the results you want.  Ask a librarian for suggestions, as well.