March, 2012

Google Toolsfor Competitive Intelligence

Insights from a Survey

by:

Updated Version

March 2012

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Introduction and Objectives

Open source and free tools available trough the internet are becoming popular nowadays. More

and more people are getting familiar about the benefit of these tools. There is a significant

increase of open source tools that make information available to a large number of

professionals.

Google, like other leading internet companies, is offering a very large number of free tools.

However, how do information users act with Google tools? In other words…

Are Information users aware of all theses tools and sources?

How are these tools utilized by Information users?

Which are the most useful with respect to Information Users?

These 3 questions motivated us to develop a survey with the aim of understanding more about

this topic.

() see for instance: http://www.google.com/intl/en/options/ () We consider information user those practitioners and other professionals that utilizes information for their job and make better decisions. They can be end user or information providers as for instance consultants or competitive intelligence practitioners.

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Executive Summary

• From April to June 2011 we launched a survey with the objective of understanding how 24

free Google tools were used by information users.

• The survey (an on-line questionnaire) obtained 466 answers from a variety of companies

world-wide.

• Information users adopt mostly Google search engine for satisfying their needs. Indeed the

Google search engine is the most important tool and is utilized as an information source.

The results also show that information users concentrate their efforts on only a few tools.

• Although Information users are aware of a great number of Google tools, there are a

significant number of tools that have not been discovered yet. Other tools are simply not

used at the time.

() You can access to the survey trough the following link: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/LNDTPDF.

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Demographic Information: Country/Region

Respondents were mostly form West Europe (41.3%). The second largest group were

form Latin America (24.2%) and North America (21.1%). The following graph will show

more details of the regions.

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Demographic Information: Sector/Industry

The sample represented many industries, although consulting was the most dominant

(17,4 %) and shows almost to be double that of other sectors/industries. The following

graph shows the top 10 industries.

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Demographic Information: Position/Job

Respondents came from several job positions. There was a great variety of descriptions

such as “Business Analyst”, “Librarian”, “Consultant”, “Marketing manager”,

“Researcher and Analyst”, “Marketing Coordinator”, “CEO”,…

However, after examining the descriptions we categorized them into 3 main groups:

Information specialists, which includes Librarians and Analysts.

Decision Makers, which includes Directors, Managers and CEOs.

Consultants, which includes consultants, Teachers and professors.

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Demographic Information: Years of Experience

Although there are some young professionals in Competitive Intelligence (26,2% that have2 or less years of experience) compared to those that have more than 10, the sample is composed of a wide range of experience in term of years dedicated to Information. The following graph shows greater detail.

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How Google Tools are utilized? (1/2)

The frequency of usage of

Google Tools vary quite

significantly between

information users. The

most common tool is

Google Search engine,

which most professionals

use. By contrast, Google

Moderator is the least

used. The following graph

shows the overall ranking

of the different tools.

Rating Average

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How Google Tools are utilized? (2/2)

The following graphs offer an alternative view of the previous result. It shows that there is an important number of tools that are unknown to information users such as, Google Squared and Public data explorer. Moreover, some tools are mostly never usedand are even unknown, such as Gtalk and Google Moderator

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Which is the most important Google Tool for CI?

Google Search, Alert, News, Reader and Maps are the tools that are most important

out of a ranking of 5. However, Google Search is the tool that is ranked highest and is

at least 3 times more important than any other tool.

The least important 5 tools are Google: Squared, News Timeline , Public data

Explorer, Real Time, and Moderator.

The next graph shows the relative positioning of the tools with respect to Google

Search tool compared with the degree of frequency used.

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Top 5+5 Google Tools

Frequency

Rel

ativ

e Im

po

rtan

ce

1.0

0.8

0.3

0.2

0.0

Always

Google Search1.00

1st ranked –73,2% of 350

information users consider Google Search their 1st

option

Very OftenSometimesRarelyNever

0.4Google Alerts (0.36)

Google News (0.31)

Google Reader (0.25)

Google Reader has been almost 3/4 less important to Google Search

Google Maps (0.22)

Google News has been ranked as 2/3 less important to Google Search

Google Alerts has been ranked almost as 2/3 less important

to Google Search

Google Maps has been ranked almost as 4/5 less important

to Google Search

Gmail (0.20)

Google Scolars (0.14)Google Docs (0.12)

You Tube (0.17)Google Translation (0.18)

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Conclusions

The survey shows that there are some common tools that information users utilize to

gather on-line information. However, there are several tools that are rarely used or

unknown and could add significant value. We therefore conclude that information

users:

Utilize Google tools for ad-hoc projects/researches not only for

searching, but also for gathering intelligence systematically (Alert, News,

or Rss )

Do not make a periodic revision of the new tools that Google make

available.

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Limitation and Further Studies

Some points for thought:

1. The survey does not show how these tools are used during the day or week. Our question: Is there any workflow that information users apply to connect or make these tools more efficient?

2. We do not know if the utilization of Google tools are inversely related to CI software. We could speculate that those users that utilize less of these free tools have some Competitive Intelligence software in their firm.

3. Additionally we do not know how much time is spent and how much time is saved by using Google Tools.

Further studies can help understand these open questions.

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If you need more information, please contact:

Alessandro Comaiinfo [;-)] miniera.es

Miniera SL

Centre d'Empreses - Parc Tecnològic del Vallès

08290 Cerdanyola del Vallès (Barcelona), Spain

Phone: +34.93.5820134

http://www.miniera.es

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