Competitive intelligence and internet visibility
You might call it competitive intelligence.
Yesterday the COO of the company asked me to search the internet far and wide for any information about a certain company. I spent about two hours searching across as many search engines as I could find, and had a friend with a paid subscription to ZoomInfo do a search for me. I also searched the Thomas Register, Jigsaw.com, the Yellow Pages, Reuters, US Newswire, and in social networking sites like LinkedIn, MySpace, Flickr, Digg and the like.
I found a link on the NewPR Wiki about What Companies Should Monitor and used that as a resource for places to search.
While I was somewhat fruitful, I found I really enjoyed the opportunity to play detective for a little while. The company could have instructed me to sign up for some paid services, but they were looking for some quick information.
It also taught me a lesson about making oneself visible. This company has apparently done a fantastic job of making itself invisible. Contrast that to a Google search done on “Daniel Johnson, Jr.” Aside from a Canadian politician of the same name, most of the top results are related to me, which excites me a lot.
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