A business research blog

Finding Data-Packed Tables and Charts on the Free Web

3/30/2015

One of the most sought after sources for business researchers are tables, graphs and charts. These are packed with hard data and make it easy to make comparisons, identify trends, and analyze the information quickly at a glance. They are particularly valuable for data oriented queries such as finding the number of customers, company rankings, import/ export data, spending data, sales figures, country rankings, market shares, or other research that can be answered with a visual data snapshot.

But how can you perform a search that zeroes in and retrieves just charts and graphs?

Many business librarians and other information professionals are familiar with RDS TableBase, a database of only tables, and charts. But TableBase, a product of Cengage/Gale can only be searched on high end subscription services like LexisNexis, or via Gale’s own online service. And TableBase has something of an uncertain future--Cengage told me that the file, which has been around for many, many, years, is currently undergoing enhancements. I hope it survives, as it has always been a unique and valuable business resource.

But there is also a strategy for quickly finding tables and charts on Google that I recently discovered when researching spending by baby boomers. It was an ideal research query for a chart or table, but simply adding the word “table” or “chart” to a Google keyword search would not be effective, since Google’s algorithm will return pages that contain one or both of those words, which may or may not be relevant or lead to an actual table or chart.

The secret? Use Google’s image search.

Since Google classifies tables and charts--when formatted as a jpeg, bmp or other image file, as they normally are-- as an “image”, to pull them up all you need to do is enter your search terms and then hit the “images” link. Here, for example, is what I found when I entered the keywords:

>>spending OR expenditures 2014 boomers OR age OR generation<<

(I also limited results to the past year, and then clicked the “images” link)

You can see above that the search brought back scores of data rich charts and graphs. Of course, the search terms themselves must be words that lend themselves to data likely to be displayed in a chart, table or graph, as in this example.

Here’s another tip: because Google displays so many images on one page, it can be hard to read the headings and titles of the rows and columns as you browse down the pages of charts Google Images returns. So you’ll want to enlarge the view of your browser, say to 150%, so you can read the text as you review them to more easily find the ones you want. See this example on the left.

When you spot one that looks good, just click on it, and Google will—as it does with all image searches—permit you to view just that image, or link to the page that contains the image. If it looks like a particularly good chart, you may want to link to its originating page to see what other relevant tables and charts may be available on the site .

If you have other tips on finding charts, tables, and graphs from an open Web search, feel free to share them here!

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Could Predictive Analytics Have Made This Prediction?

3/23/2015

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About 20 years ago my wife and I were living in Washington DC. I read that a well-known political analyst would soon be speaking at American University on global affairs and I decided to go to hear his talk.

He spoke compellingly about a variety of forces underway around the world and predicted that the Internet will become a tool for recruitment by terrorists overseas.

Wait. What?

This was 1996; the public was just learning about the Internet (the Web browser had been introduced only two years earlier); and global terrorism, while certainly on any political analyst’s radar, was also not a front and center issue for the rest of us, certainly compared to post 9-11.

Over the years, that statement from this analyst stuck in my mind. It seemed so out of the blue and, in retrospect, so eerily prescient. Unfortunately, I had forgotten his name.

Just a couple weeks ago, the name “Kaplan” popped into my mind. I did a couple quick Google searches, and confirmed, that yes, Atlantic magazine writer, author, and think tank political strategist Robert D. Kaplan was in fact the person I heard make that prophecy nearly 20 years ago.

I quickly found out that Kaplan is considered one of the top analysts in the world on international affairs, is situated in the political “realist” camp, and has written several highly acclaimed books on global affairs. I got hold of an early book of essays, The Coming Anarchy published in 2000. The first chapter, published in the Atlantic in 1994, was a deep examination of forces underway in failed states in parts of Africa in the early 1990s, accompanied by his analyses that the world will soon see the rise of new types of terrorism, whose origins and tactics he outlined in great detail. In fact, terrorist operations with those characteristics and strategies have manifested themselves in recent years in the form of groups like ISIS and Boko Haram, as Kaplan’s book chillingly predicted.

We are living in an age where everything must be boiled down to a measurable metric, and where with the right sensors, software, algorithm, big data set and dashboard, we are supposed to be able to predict everything from the day of the week a customer is most likely to churn, to how many minutes to a probable equipment failure, to which pilot television series is going to succeed among viewers and much more.

And there is no question that big data is a big deal and if the analytics are done correctly, the data will reveal meaningful hidden patterns that can lead to greater insights about what is most likely to occur under what circumstances, and therefore lead to better business decisions.

But as the late media and technology sage, scholar and author Neil Postman noted, when trying to determine the best way to research and understand a phenomenon, it’s worth considering the difference between a blink and a wink. The former is a physiological process, so when trying to determine how to best understand it, it is appropriate to apply quantitative analyses and analytics. The latter is a social behavior, where discerning meaning is complex, unpredictable and derives from messy human behavior and intentions. Understanding the meaning of a wink, and say, predicting when someone is likely to wink again, can better be done by non-quantitative methods like storytelling, based on deep immersion and experience in the relevant social behaviors.

Kaplan spent decades living around the globe, embedding himself in failed states and talking to ordinary people who could tell and show him what was going on in their world. He used this experience and his insights to tell us his stories and to apply what he learned to tell us what he thought what was most likely to occur. And he was good at it—apparently really good at it. Could an algorithm have done this?

Big data can be a powerful tool for predicting the future. But experience, insight, and storytelling remain at least as powerful for helping us understand how and why people are behaving the way they are and what kind of future those actions will likely bring to pass.

Your thoughts?

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The Key to Open Web Searching: Find Your Filters

3/16/2015

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It’s a rare event when any of us complains that we can’t find information on a topic. These days we all struggle with the opposite problem: how to sort through, make sense of, and zero in on the “best”: i.e. the most relevant, substantive, insightful, timely and credible sources when searching the open Web.

I recently faced that dilemma when I had to do some searching on a very broad topic: digital newspaper advertising trends. As you can probably guess, there were way too many articles, studies, sources, analyses and reports on this topic to even begin trying to work through.

So—what’s my strategy? Well, first I should say that although it’s become fashionable to pile on Google, I am still a big fan of the ability of its algorithm to take in so many “signals” to prioritize and rank highly pages most likely to be relevant and valuable. However. Despite Google’s capabilities, we still have to sort through sites that are less than desirable. I’d put these into the following categories:

Sites so popular that you are likely going to find them almost always ranked highly. Think USAToday or CNN among others.

Entities so focused on search engine optimization and working the system, that they appear much higher than others that are not so skilled at SEO, but are at least as good if not better. Think, for example HuffingtonPost. In the case of individuals, there are people who seem to spend most of their time getting Twitter followers, LinkedIn connections, performing strategic commenting on popular blogs and focusing on building their Klout score to get a high ranking as well.

The content on the site is not so much independent journalism and analysis, but more “sponsored content”—commercially sponsored white papers, reports, articles and other reporting that masquerades as journalism, but whose creators actually have a much narrower focus and are more like informative advertisements. I’m seeing lots more sponsored content these days as more news and educational sites—even those with stellar reputations—are finding sponsored content to be a new reliable source of revenue.

So, one way I try to bypass retrieving too many of these sites is to first consider who or what I want to be my custom filters—these are journals, sites, or even individuals’ whose work I find consistently insightful and on target. So then, at least for some of my searches, I leverage Google’s search power to retrieve just those pages that were published in those journals, or written by those people.

So, for instance, in my research on newspaper advertising trends, I determined that my best sources (among others) included Pew Research, NPR, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist and Business Insider. I could then focus my searches in one of two ways—the simpler way is to do a simple “OR” ing of my sources and names with my search terms as you can see above.

While the other is to leverage Google’s site search function to ensure that I am only searching content on my preferred site as illustrated here to the left.

In either case, I am insured that I am going to find articles on my topic of interest from one of my most trusted sources or people.

What are your strategies for getting more filtered results on Google?

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Gail Sheehy Focuses on "The Why" of it all

3/9/2015

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Business researchers and journalists have a lot in common. Both engage in information intensive activities that require many of the same traits and capabilities—curiosity, research and interviewing skills, the ability to identify credible sources, and a talent for presenting the results of the research in writing or in other modes.

That’s why, from time to time, in addition to posts about sources and strategies for finding and analyzing business information, you’ll find some discussion here that relates to reporting and journalism.

About a week ago, my wife and I attended a fascinating talk sponsored by the Rochester, NY Jewish Book Festival by the journalist and author Gail Sheehy. During her career, Sheehy has been a writer for the New Yorker, conducted one-on-one interviews with presidents, Kings and world leaders, but is best known for her ground breaking book about adult life patterns titled Passages. Sheehy’s newest is book is Daring: My Passages: A Memoir.

In her 90 minute talk about her life, challenges, struggles and rich career, Sheehy shared a few valuable insights with the same underlying theme, and these are of particular value to all researchers and journalists:

* The best career advice that Sheehy ever received, she told the audience, was not to go after smaller stories. Instead she was told to tackle a big story that “everybody is talking about” and uncover the “why” behind the story.

* In response to my question to Sheehy as to who she would most like to interview today and what she’d want to find out, she answered Vladimir Putin. And to find out what drives him and why he acts as he does, she said she would encourage him to talk about great leaders in Russian history.

* In discussing the rise of social media as the newest form of reporting, Sheehy made the point that long form journalism is what gives us context and answers to our questions; but how do we get to “the why” in 140 characters?

So to Sheehy, it’s all about answering the why question, and that’s something that despite the rise of big data and computer generated news story creation, it still takes a human mind to answer. A computer, for example, could not have taken data points and put together PBS's Frontline’s compelling exploration of the origin of ISIS, answering the question why did it come to be the force it is today.

Nor can automated systems answer the most important "why" questions that you can find and tackle as a qualified business researcher either.

Your thoughts?

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A Conversation With: Daphne Kasriel-Alexander, Consumer Trends Consultant, Euromonitor, on the Top Consumer Trends for 2015

3/3/2015

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A First Tuesday Profile

Welcome to the first in our brand new “First Tuesday” feature. On the first Tuesday of every month we will feature a one-on-one discussion with a person behind one of the previous month’s Best of the Business Web e-letter selections that we feel would be particularly interesting to talk to.

For this initial interview, we have chosen Daphne Kasriel-Alexander, a consultant at the global market research firm Euromonitor and author of a recently released 35 page study titled “TOP 10 GLOBAL CONSUMER TRENDS FOR 2015.” We highlighted that report as a selection in our last month's February 2015 Best of the Business Web issue.

Kasriel-Alexander is based in the U.K. and we spoke to her via Skype this afternoon. Below is an edited summary of our discussion.

Q. Thanks for taking the time to do this Daphne. I’d like to begin by asking you a bit about yourself—where you grew up, your professional background, and your current work at Euromonitor.

A. Well, I grew up in London, and earned a BSc in Philosophy and Social Sciences there from City University as well as a Diploma in Community Journalism. That led to my work in issue led communications work at various NGOs and charities. Eventually I moved to Greece where I got a job at an English-language newspaper, which eventually led to doing strategic communications work with the Mediterranean Action Plan of the United Nations Environment Program, and a range of organizations ranging from the Gilo Centre for Citizenship to the European Commission’s Leonardo da Vinci lifelong training program to the British Council.

I have been with Euromonitor for almost 8 years now, where as a consultant I work with a team of analysts around the globe. These analysts are not typical marketers, but are a diverse group with backgrounds ranging from biotechnology to journalism. That kind of team creates a global outlook and serves to enrich our reporting.

Q. Have you written the past versions of the trends report, or is this your first time?

A. I have done it for a few years. I think it offers a really good overview for people who can’t read all of our materials. To create this report, I identify trends and how to look at different facets of them and do my secondary research. I also incorporate selected interesting insights from our consumer content and Euromonitor’s own data as well.

Q. Do you have a certain approach or philosophy you take when you begin your secondary research?

A. No methodology per se. I read quite broadly and think about things quite a lot.

But of course I have developed filters to guide me. For example, in the talkbalks (comments), I try to notice interesting things—for example all this discussion about the color of “the dress”—and then try to figure out how these discussions are impacting consumption. I try to discern the broad cultural trends and analyze how they influence what people are buying or not buying. These kinds of larger trends should inform a business’s choice of strategy whenever considering launching something new or launching into new markets

Q. Let’s talk about some of the specific content in the report itself now. Clearly millennials and how they make purchasing decisions has been and still is a very hot topic. What are some interesting trends that you are seeing here?

A. Millennials need to be paid close attention to as they are tomorrow’s consumers, and have special characteristics and habits. For instance, they are used to getting things for free. They are media savvy and know how to filter out messages, including ads, they find uninteresting or irrelevant. And there’s no hard divide between work and leisure—so they don’t always follow traditional rules in the workplace. They have a tendency to share, and employ a collective approach to problem solving.

As a group, they also have tended to delay’s life milestones—which is why some have also called this group Generation Pause. This has created headaches for brands.

Q. How much is the Great Recession of 2008 still reverberating in how we all consume?

A. It has left a very interesting legacy. For one, it’s now OK to be thrifty and frugal. We used to be embarrassed at trying to save money, but now we may boast at how little something costs. That doesn’t mean we are still not looking for value and durability and quality. Another thing the recession did was to kick start the sharing economy. It’s okay now to not buy, but to share.

Q. How do you distinguish a true and long lasting trend from a passing fad or blip?

A. I may have to take risks in naming trends, but I try to step back and put things into a broader context. For example, one section of the report looks at “vloggers” (video bloggers), but I don’t call that a trend itself, but rather view it as part of a larger one I call: “Influencers: More Like Us”.

Q. Do you see any brand new signals that emerged after your research was completed, that you think might turn into a full-fledged trend?

A. Ahh, that is part of my secret collection for next year! Seriously, though, first of course it never is possible to cover all trends in a single report, and there are things I did not cover this year that perhaps will make it to next year’s report such as parenting related issues and time as a precious and luxury good. But one new phenomenon I find particularly interesting, and which I’ve written about is that not only are consumers rating companies, but some brands, say Uber and Airbnb are starting to rate consumers. This is changing the way reviews are being written and is something I’m watching closely.

To download a free copy of the trends report, link to: http://go.euromonitor.com/white-paper-top-10-global-consumer-trends-2015.html

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Finding Data-Packed Tables and Charts on the Free Web

Could Predictive Analytics Have Made This Prediction?

The Key to Open Web Searching: Find Your Filters

Gail Sheehy Focuses on "The Why" of it all

A Conversation With: Daphne Kasriel-Alexander, Consumer Trends Consultant, Euromonitor, on the Top Consumer Trends for 2015

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