This guide on competitive intelligence resources on the web was first published in 2005, and I have continued to edit, revise and update it over the course of 16 years. My objective is to provide researchers with a current, well vetted, reliable, actionable subject matter specific pathfinder on a wide range of sites and services to assist in the delivery of outstanding customer service. Seasoned researchers, law librarians and knowledge managers and analysts routinely use content rich sites to effectively add value to their work products. This Best of the Web CI Guide identifies an extensive range of topical search engines, portals, government sponsored and open source databases, news and subject matter specific alerts and  archives, as well as sources from the academic, corporate and media sectors. The sites I have included are benchmarks: for internet search and discovery, monitoring, analyzing and reviewing current and historical data, news, reports, analysis and commentary, statistics, and profiles on companies, markets, countries, people and issues, from a national and a global perspective. My recommendations are accompanied by links to trusted and targeted content and sources produced by reputable media and publishing companies, businesses, government organizations, academe, IGOs and NGOs, and expert legal and technology professionals.

The internet is a dynamic ecosystem with an ever increasing number of web site content residing behind paywalls. Every year in conducting research for this guide I have identified more go-to sites and services that have substantially changed, merged or been purchased along with their domain name and URL, gone offline altogether, or changed their content from free to fee. Even in light of these changes, hundreds of sites remain available to researchers that offer a wealth of information, data, commentary and analysis. New sites and services are increasingly published using social media applications, and researchers are challenged to make quick determinations as to their value. This guide will assist you in streamlining and focusing the process of efficient knowledge discovery.

For 25 years LLRX has not changed its URL and remains an independent, non-affiliated, one woman owned and edited publication. Please also consider including this guide as a dependable resource for teaching and training programs. As always, I appreciate your suggestions to include additional sites and sources in this guide. Thank you – and may your research always shine light on the facts.

Selected Search Engines, Web Archives, Open Data Repositories and facilitate locating information, data and analytics via Web, Blogs, News, Video and Opt-In Alerts.

Web and Data Search – searching and locating relevant, reliable and actionable information will benefit from consistently using a range of search engines, blogs, applications and strategies in your research process. A selection of sources from which you may consider with assurance, dependent upon your specific research requirements, are as follows:

beSpacific is a free, factual, independent, one woman owned and published current awareness research blog launched in 2002, delivered on the internet and via email, daily. BeSpacific is focused on reliable, accurate, comprehensive coverage of topical news and resources on subject matters that have impact here in America, as well as around the world. Topics include: law and technology, legal research, government documents and FOIA, the global financial system, economics, technology, cyber-security, privacy, civil liberties, and issues related to libraries in all sectors. Deep links located via expert, thorough research provide readers with direct access to an extensive range of timely documents from the government, academe, NGOs/IGOs, advocacy groups, corporate, news, tech and legal sectors. Sources include state, federal and foreign governments, open access databases, surveys, technical reports and education-based sources from legal, government, library, public interest and academic communities, as well as from information innovators. The site’s searchable database has over 45,000 postings, and is updated daily – https://www.bespacific.com. See also the beSpacific Twitter feed. Readers may also subscribe to free weekday updates providing the complete set of 10 daily postings in one HTML email. beSpacific was recognized in the ABA Top 100 Law Blogs. BeSpacific is the sister site to LLRX.com

Bing from Microsoft has a social media focus, replete with “images of the day” as well as top stories accompanying selected images. Search the web, news, images, videos, maps. Links to MSN, Office Online and Outlook.com integrate your office and desktop applications seamlessly. Sign in access to your own search history, saved searches and updates/alerts. Maps [U.S. and global] include – directions – driving walking, transit, traffic updates, commerce, gas prices, parking finder, taxi fares, travel info, history, weather and more e-commerce related content. The Bing Help directory provides user-friendly explanations for features and tools, including email alerts, updates and available search options. See also the Bing Help page for information on How Bing Delivers Search Results. Note – Bing is the default search engine in many workplaces that use the Microsoft Office 365. https://www.bing.com/

CiteSeerX is an open source project developed at and hosted by The College of Information Sciences and Technology. It “is an evolving scientific literature digital library and search engine that has focused primarily on the literature in computer and information science. CiteSeerx aims to improve the dissemination of scientific literature and to provide improvements in functionality, usability, availability, cost, comprehensiveness, efficiency, and timeliness in the access of scientific and scholarly knowledge. Rather than creating just another digital library, CiteSeerx attempts to provide resources such as algorithms, data, metadata, services, techniques, and software that can be used to promote other digital libraries. CiteSeerx has developed new methods and algorithms to index PostScript and PDF research articles on the Web.” https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/index

From InfoSpace, a reliable metasearch engine for the web, images, video and news, is dogpile. “InfoSpace created the Dogpile search engine because your time is important to us. Powered by Metasearch technology, Dogpile returns all the best results from leading search engines including Google and Yahoo!, so you find what you’re looking for faster. Each search engine has its own method of searching and each will return different results. Dogpile looks at all of them, decides which are most relevant to your search, eliminates duplicates and reveals them to you. In the end, you get a list of results more complete than anywhere else on the Web. The time-saving philosophy of metasearch is so important to us that it even inspired our name! In rugby, players come together and pile on top of one another. This is exactly what Dogpile’s metasearch technology does – it compiles all the best results in one easy-to-access place! https://www.dogpile.com/

“BASE is one of the world’s most voluminous search engines especially for academic web resources. BASE provides more than 273 million documents from 9,000 sources. You can access the full texts of about 60% of the indexed documents for free (Open Access). BASE is operated by Bielefeld University Library. We are indexing the metadata of all kinds of academically relevant resources – journals, institutional repositories, digital collections etc. – which provide an OAI interface and use OAI-PMH for providing their contents (see our Golden Rules for Repository Managers). The index is continuously enhanced by integrating further sources (you can suggest a source which is not indexed yet). We are working on several new features like a claiming service for authors within the ORCID DE project. BASE is a registered OAI service provider. Database managers can integrate the BASE index into their local infrastructure (e.g. meta search engines, library catalogues). Further on there are several tools and services for users, database and repository managers. https://www.base-search.net/

“The CyberCemetery is an archive of government websites that have ceased operation (usually websites of defunct government agencies and commissions that have issued a final report). This collection features a variety of topics indicative of the broad nature of government information. In particular, this collection features websites that cover topics supporting the university’s curriculum and particular program strengths.” https://govinfo.library.unt.edu/

DuckDuckGo – “DuckDuckGo is an Internet privacy company that empowers you to seamlessly take control of your personal information online, without any tradeoffs. With our roots as the search engine that doesn’t track you, we’ve expanded what we do to protect you no matter where the Internet takes you. The search engine that doesn’t track you – At DuckDuckGo, our vision is to raise the standard of trust online, and in service of that vision, our mission is to be the world’s most trusted search engine. We are proud to say that at the end of last year, we surpassed a cumulative count of 22 billion anonymous searches served. We are growing faster than ever with over 25 million direct user queries at the end of 2018. This is a search engine with: Way more instant answers – DuckDuckGo enables you to search 100s of other sites directly (see the Help Library to help leverage the site’s commands and strategies using the site’s various features, tools and applications). Just use the drop-down menu on the upper right hand side of the search box. As you use it, your most frequented sites will automatically be displayed at the top. Search fields for conversions, calculations, facts, zero-click info sources and Real privacy – DuckDuckGo does not collect or share personal information.” This site hosts an excellent blog that provides actionable information to protect you and your devices from malicious intrusion, ad tracking and collection of your personal data by the vendors of your respective hardware and smartphones. https://duckduckgo.com/

DuckDuckGoLite – This stripped down, ad free, lightening fast sibling of DuckDuckGo harkens back to the original minimalistic Google search bar, with results delivered in a numbered series, inclusive of a very short abstract, identification of the publisher, and the link. The site does not track you or gather information about you or your searches. Try it if you are in a hurry and know that the facts you are seeking can be surfaced quickly and accurately. https://duckduckgo.com/lite/

Facebook – Facebook celebrated its 15th anniversary in April 2019. “As of 29 April 2019, Facebook was the world’s largest online social network, with 2.375 billion monthly active users (MAU) based on Q1 2019 results. Facebook reached the 2-billion monthly user milestone on 30 June 2017…” https://www.facebook.com/help/821153694683665. “Users may review features, new developments for mobile, features, and company information, via the Facebook Newsroom.” According to Pew – Roughly seven-in-ten adults (69%) say they…use the platform – while the number of teens is far lower. Throughout 2019, Facebook faced considerable push back from Congress about its proposed Libra cryptocurrency initiative, from privacy advocates about user data collection, and from its own employees.

FindLaw – Legal web, courts, news, and and topical legal content – the site is owned by Thomson Reuters. https://lp.findlaw.com/

Gigablast – “Founded in 2000, Matt Wells created Gigablast to index hundreds of billions of pages with the least amount of hardware possible. Gigablast provides large-scale, high-performance, real-time information retrieval technology and services for partner sites. The company offers a variety of features including topic generation and the ability to index multiple document formats. This search delivery mechanism gives a partner “turn key” search capability and the capacity to instantly offer search at maximum scalability with minimum cost. Clients range from NASDAQ 100 listed corporations to boutique companies. Gigablast is one of a handful of search engines in the United States that maintains its own searchable index of over a billion pages. More about Gigablast’s Spell Checker API.” https://gigablast.com.

Global-Regulation – 1,823,663 laws from 95 countries (150 data sources). “The database of laws is always growing. We translate laws into English using machine translation (Google, Microsoft & IBM).” https://www.global-regulation.com/

Google – The formerly crowded field of search engines is now reduced to just one search engine powerhouse in the U.S. – Google. Google maintained the spot as Most Popular Search Engine in 2019, with various polls tracking it with up to 74% of core search queries conducted. Users may choose to sign into one of their respective Google accounts to conduct a search, or not. Google is available in iterations for phone, tablet or laptop. Searches may be conducted by using a keyboard or key pad, or by voice command. See also the Google Advanced Search feature. The Google Help Center provides text and video assistance for all aspects of search functionality on all devices. https://www.google.com/

Google Scholar – “From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: articles, theses, books, abstracts and legal opinions and journals and patents” (NYU Libraries posted an excellent guide to Advanced Scholar search – updated in 2019. (Please note that searching university catalogs and resources and then linking to respective subscriptions materials is often to enrolled students and some time alumni.) Sources include academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other web sites (use this site for Scholar Site preference search). See also Advanced Scholar Search tips to narrow and focus your scholarly content research results, as well as trying the menu that appears on the left hand side of the main search screen (if you are signed into one of the Google apps –  Overview / Searching / Alerts / Library / Export / Coverage / Corrections / Questions / – allowing a choice of content including searching for court opinions and within certain jurisdictions.  See also Sort by date for legal search and Google Scholar library, “your personal collection of articles in Scholar. You can save articles right from the search page, organize them by topic, and use the power of Scholar’s full-text search & ranking to quickly find just the one you want – at any time and from anywhere.” See also The Lawyerist Google Scholar Research Guide. You can create a public Scholar profile. See also Finding significant citations for legal opinions. https://scholar.google.com/.

Google News Search (use the menu that appears when you arrive at this site – far left hand side, and make use of advanced search features to obtain more focused, accurate results). Users may also choose to: search news from specific countries; and view the news results accompanied by images, annotations and social media links, or just view the headlines. Users who sign in to one of their respective Google accounts have seamless access to Google News and Google Search applications. See How Google News Works – a guide by Google. https://news.google.com/

governmentattic.org “provides electronic copies of thousands of interesting Federal Government documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. This site provides the full text of current and historical documents, reports on items in the news” and reports that are otherwise not in the public domain without the intervention of the FOIA process. This voluminous site is the primary resource for government documents obtained via FOIA requests, and spans all agencies, subject matter, and includes historical and current documents.” governmentattic.org

Justia – Reliable, timely, comprehensive directory of primary and secondary legal resources, searchable and browsable by practice areas, topics and subject specific sources, cases in the news, legal blogs and expert commentary – https://www.justia.com/. Justia provides Free Daily Newsletters of Opinion Summaries for the US Supreme Court, all US Federal Appellate Courts & the 50 US State Supreme Courts and Weekly Practice Area Opinion Summaries Newsletters. Use this Link to Subscribe to free newsletters and commentary. https://www.justia.com/

IMF eLibrary – On January 1, 2020 the IMF made its online research platform, IMF eLibrary, free to all users. The platform delivers the most complete collection of IMF content and statistics with user-friendly tools. “The International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) eLibrary simplifies analysis and research with direct access to the IMF’s periodicals, books, working papers and studies, and data and statistical tools. You will find information and perspective on macroeconomics, globalization, development, trade and aid, technical assistance, demographics, emerging markets, policy advice, poverty reduction, and so much more.” https://www.elibrary.imf.org/

Law.com Search – This is a branded, legal search engine from ALM [used paywall], owner of leading legal local and national legal publications. “Search brings legal professionals relevant results from across the Law.com network of sites and the legal web, including hundreds of hand-picked law firm websites and legal blogs.” Most of the site’s publications, national and regional, are only available to paid subscribers. https://www.law.com/search

LinkedIn: “LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional network with nearly 660+ million users in more than 200 countries and territories worldwide.” The site is owned by Microsoft. The site was launched in 2003. Although portions of the site are available free, users are offered tiered pricing subscription options to access additional information about members, as well as about their connections, to share their respective information, to search for and join topical knowledge sharing groups, to seek and to provide performance recommendations, as well as to block others from connecting. The site has become a benchmark for researching colleagues and job candidates, as well as for identifying key information on organizations, companies, academe, NGOs, government agencies and market sectors. Users may post their blog and twitter feeds and open them for network comments, requests and market specialized expertise and services, and email one another via a LinkedIn email address. This a go-to site for competitive intelligence about individuals, organizations, customers, clients, and also for learning, education and knowledge management. Note – via Matt Wells at Gigablst – “LinkedIn is a walled garden of data, owned by Microsoft, that is no longer an openly-shared platform. While Microsoft shares their LinkedIn data with Google, and of course Bing, which they own, other smaller search engines can not access the data, whatsoever.” https://www.linkedin.com/

OAIster via OCLC – “OAIster is a union catalog of millions of records that represent open access resources. This catalog was built through harvesting from open access collections worldwide using the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH). Today, OAIster includes more than 50 million records that represent digital resources from more than 2,000 contributors. A freely accessible site for searching only OAIster recordshttps://oaister.worldcat.org/ is available. Additionally, OAIster records are fully accessible through WorldCat.org, and appear as WorldCat.org search results along with records from thousands of libraries worldwide. The OAIster database is searchable on the OCLC FirstSearch service, providing another valuable access point for this rich database and a complement to other FirstSearch databases.” https://oaister.worldcat.org/

OneLook – “Think of this web site as a search engine for words and phrases: If you have a word for which you’d like a definition, we’ll quickly shuttle you to the web-based dictionaries that define that word. If you don’t know the right word to use, we’ll help you find it. No word is too obscure: More than 19 million words in more than 1000 online dictionaries are indexed by the OneLook® search engine.” https://www.onelook.com/index.php?e=1

See also OneLook Reverse Dictionary – “This tool lets you describe a concept and get back a list of words and phrases related to that concept. Your description can be anything at all: a single word, a few words, or even a whole sentence. Type in your description and hit Enter (or select a word that shows up in the autocomplete preview) to see the related words.” https://www.onelook.com/reverse-dictionary.shtml

Open Project MUSE – “Project MUSE offers open access (OA) books and journals from several distinguished university presses and scholarly societies. Through our open access hosting programs, we are able to offer publishers a platform for their OA content which ensures visibility, discoverability, and wide dissemination. These books and journals are freely available to libraries and users around the world. https://about.muse.jhu.edu/muse/open-access-overview/

Search Engine Colossus, International Directory of Search Engines – links to search engines from 315 countries and territories around the world – https://www.searchenginecolossus.com/

ReportLinker [subscription only] – “ReportLinker is a technology company that simplifies how analysts and decision makers get industry data for their business thanks to:

• latest reports & slideshows with insights from top research analysts that provide full understanding of how 5,000+ industry sectors work (industry overview, key players, market drivers…)
• 150+ Million easily actionable statistics with tables, figures & datasets (sales forecasts, market shares, production data…)
• More than 25,000 trusted sources such as government agencies, international organizations, consultancies, industry associations… https://www.reportlinker.com/

Science Direct’s search engine – Browse 4,160 journals and 29,377 books – results can be filtered by subject. [Subscription req’d to access full text content.] https://www.sciencedirect.com/browse/journals-and-books

Science.gov – Science.gov searches over 60 databases and over 2,200 scientific websites to provide users with access to more than 200 million pages of authoritative federal science information including research and development results. https://www.science.gov/

StartPage is another specialized “privacy” search engine. The company claims to permit users to conduct private searches – no tracking of your IP address, browser information and no storage of your search history to minimize intrusion by unsolicited e-commerce. Search the web, images, video. An advanced search feature is available and suggested for researchers. This site offers the user The Anonymous View Proxy. “Instead of disabling JavaScript, we use advanced, unique technology to allow almost all Javascript, while rewriting and “redefining” Javascript primitives to protect your privacy.” This is often much safer than a VPN, blocking many “browser fingerprinting” and “device fingerprinting” tracking techniques—which VPNs can’t do.” https://www.startpage.com/

TinEye – “Using TinEye, you can search by image or perform what we call a reverse image search. You can do that by uploading an image or searching by URL. You can also simply drag and drop your images to start your search. TinEye constantly crawls the web and adds images to its index. Today, the TinEye index is over 39 billion images. See also the site’s extensions, widgets & badges. https://www.tineye.com/

Trademarkia “is the largest visual search engine for more than 7 million trademarked logos, names, and slogans on the Internet. Users many also conduct European Trademark searches as well as International Trademark searches, by choosing specific countries. https://www.trademarkia.com/

TRID, the TRIS and ITRD Database – “TRID is an integrated database that combines the records from TRB’s Transportation Research Information Services (TRIS) Database and the OECD’s Joint Transport Research Centre’s International Transport Research Documentation (ITRD) Database. TRID provides access to more than 1.2 million records of transportation research worldwide.” https://trid.trb.org/

Twitter – “Twitter is an online social networking service that enables users to send short 280-character messages called tweets. According to recent social media industry figures, Twitter currently ranks as one of the leading social networks worldwide based on active users. As of the fourth quarter of 2018, Twitter had 321 million monthly active users. During the same period, the number of monetizable daily active Twitter users worldwide stood at 126 million. Registered users can read and post tweets as well as follow other users via update feed.” [Twitter use requires username and password]. It is a real-time information network that connects you to the latest information from around the world on a huge range of topics, people, events, products, statistics, data, photographs, commentary, politics [anything you can think of you can probably search for and find information about on Twitter] Make use of the Twitter Search engine as well as the Advanced Search page. https://twitter.com

USA.gov is the official U.S. portal to federal, state, local, tribal, and international government information and services.” Use Search.usa.gov, “a comprehensive, searchable index of about 50 million pages from federal, state, local, territorial, and tribal websites…USA.gov searches only federal, state, and local government websites for the public. Its search box works like other search engines you’re used to, but USA.gov only returns results from government web pages, most ending in .gov or .mil. This helps you be sure you’re getting official information you can trust–and there’s no advertising.” https://www.usa.gov/

WolframAlpha – Compute expert-level answers using Wolfram’s breakthrough algorithms, knowledgebase and AI technology – Wolfram|Alpha’s long-term goal is to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable and accessible to everyone. Wolfram|Alpha brings expert-level knowledge and capabilities to the broadest possible range of people—spanning all professions and education levels. We work to accept completely free-form input, and to serve as a knowledge engine that generates powerful results and presents them with maximum clarity. Energetically developed for more than a decade, Wolfram|Alpha is an ambitious, long-term intellectual endeavor that we intend will deliver ever-increasing capabilities over the years to come. With a world-class team and participation from top outside experts in countless fields, we are constantly working to create what we hope will stand as a major milestone of 21st-century intellectual achievement. https://www.wolframalpha.com/

Wiley Online Search Library – Use the advanced search feature http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/advanced/search to locate journal articles using field specific metadata as well as specific dates. Note – access to content is linked to respective subscription agreements. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/advanced/search

World Bank Open Data – “Free and open access to global development data.” Browse by Country or Indicator. https://data.worldbank.org/

WTO Data Portal portal “contains statistical indicators related to WTO issues. Available time series cover merchandise trade and trade in services statistics, market access indicators (bound, applied & preferential tariffs), non-tariff information as well as other indicators. Data retrieval functionalities include data selection, display and export, including available metadata.” https://data.wto.org/

Yahoo Search [Owned by Verizon Communications] – Focus your search by choosing one of the following features: web, images, video, local, shopping, apps, news, directory, blogs, finance. The site also provides a helpful Advanced Web Search feature. https://www.yahoo.com/

YouTube [owned by Google] – “Over 2 Billion logged-in users visit YouTube each month and every day people watch over a billion hours of video and generate billions of views. More than 70% of YouTube watchtime comes from mobile devices. YouTube has launched local versions in more than 100 countries. You can navigate YouTube in a total of 80 different languages.” http://www.youtube.com/

Customized Topical Search Engines Developed by Academe and Professionals

Searching think tank, NGO and IGO information is an important facet of an effective search strategy. There are many organizations that comprise the “think tank” space, so it is significant that a number of search engines have been developed to focus on locating and surfacing this content.

American Policy Directory from the University of Oregon libraries, provides access to dozen of topical search engines specific to think tanks focuses on a range of issues that includes: business, civil rights, constitutional rights, consumer protection, economic rights, public finance, and women’s issues. Users may search all topics the site covers or individual topics. https://library.uoregon.edu/govdocs/apd

Find Policy – This is a Google Custom Search. “Find results from 17 leading think tanks working on foreign policy, in the US and Europe.” https://www.findpolicy.org

Non-Governmental Organizations Search LibGuide via the University of Michigan Library. “A guide to resources covering NGO-generated information, including websites, publications, and other resources.” https://guides.lib.umich.edu/c.php?g=282816&p=1884489

Think Tank Search is the work of Keely Wilczek at Harvard University. “A Google Custom Search of more than 1200 think tanks and research centers. Think Tank Search searches the websites of institutions that generate public policy research, analysis, and activity. These sites are affiliated with universities, governments, advocacy groups, foundations, non-governmental organizations, and businesses. Inclusion is based upon the relevancy of subject area to HKS coursework and scholarship, the availability of the think tank’s research in full-text on the website, and the think tank’s reputation and influence upon policy making. The list represents a mixture of partisan and non-partisan think tanks.” https://guides.library.harvard.edu/c.php?g=310680&p=2072552

Subject specific content from think tanks – “Welcome to the The Grey Literature Report. The report is a publication produced by the The New York Academy of Medicine between 1999 – 2016, alerting readers to new grey literature publications in health services research and selected urban health topics. As of January 2017, the Grey Literature Report website and database will be discontinued and will no longer be updated, but the resources will still be accessible. Grey Literature resources are cataloged and indexed using MeSH. The database allows full text keyword searching as well as subject searching and serves as an archive for the Reports.”

World Directory of Think Tanks via the National Institute for Research Advancement (NIRA). The site provides a searchable database of think tanks around the world, as well as listings organized country. Most of the documents are accessible in English. https://www.nira.or.jp/english/nwdtt/nwdtt.html

Open Source Research Archives and Portals

HathiTrust Digital Library – “Founded in 2008, HathiTrust is a not-for-profit collaborative of academic and research libraries preserving 17+ million digitized items. HathiTrust offers reading access to the fullest extent allowable by U.S. copyright law, computational access to the entire corpus for scholarly research, and other emerging services based on the combined collection. HathiTrust members steward the collection — the largest set of digitized books managed by academic and research libraries — under the aims of scholarly, not corporate, interests.” The site provides Advanced Full-text Search as well as a Search Tips FAQ. Currently Digitized statistics are as follows: 17,153,606 total volumes; 8,291,212 book titles; 459,751 serial titles; 6,003,762,100 pages; 769 terabytes; 203 miles. https://www.hathitrust.org/

Internet Archive – “The Internet Archive, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, is building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form. Like a paper library, we provide free access to researchers, historians, scholars, the print disabled, and the general public. Our mission is to provide Universal Access to All Knowledge. We began in 1996 by archiving the Internet itself, a medium that was just beginning to grow in use. Like newspapers, the content published on the web was ephemeral – but unlike newspapers, no one was saving it. Today we have 20+ years of web history accessible through the Wayback Machine and we work with 625+ library and other partners through our Archive-It program to identify important web pages. As our web archive grew, so did our commitment to providing digital versions of other published works. Today our archive contains:

• 330 billion web pages
• 20 million books and texts
• 4.5 million audio recordings (including 180,000 live concerts)
• 4 million videos (including 1.6 million Television News programs)
• 3 million images
• 200,000 software programs

PLOS / Public Library of Science – “PLOS (Public Library of Science) is a nonprofit publisher, innovator and advocacy organization with a mission of leading a transformation in scientific and medical research communication. PLOS Journals – 215,000+ peer-reviewed articles are free to access, reuse and redistribute. Every article we publish is open-access – freely available online for anyone to use – which benefits everyone, from researchers, educators, and patient advocates to funders, policymakers, and the public. Sharing research encourages progress – from protecting the biodiversity of our planet to finding more effective treatments for diseases such as AIDS or cancer.” https://www.plos.org/

Wayback Machine – “Explore more than 286 billion web pages saved over time. To start surfing the Wayback, type in the web address of a site or page where you would like to start, and press enter. Then select from the archived dates available. The resulting pages point to other archived pages at as close a date as possible.” This site is a critical tool for researchers as the disappearance of websites is accelerating, and with them, significant resources and knowledge are lost. As print libraries are concurrently disappearing, this site is a tremendous resource to locate information, software, images, movies, online games and a plethora of other intellectual property that is no longer actively maintained or accessible using the original source URLs. ” https://archive.org/

Federated Search and Semantic Search

AMiner aims to provide comprehensive search and mining services for researcher social networks. “In this system, we focus on: (1) creating a semantic-based profile for each researcher by extracting information from the distributed Web; (2) integrating academic data (e.g., the bibliographic data and the researcher profiles) from multiple sources; (3) accurately searching the heterogeneous network; (4) analyzing and discovering interesting patterns from the built researcher social network.” https://www.aminer.org/

Crossref – “Crossref aims to link research together, making related items more findable, increasing transparency, and showing how ideas spread and develop. Crossref makes research outputs easy to find, cite, link, assess, and reuse. We’re a not-for-profit membership organization that exists to make scholarly communications better.” https://www.crossref.org/

Dimensions / Free version – “Dimensions contains more than 100 million publications, ranging from articles published in scholarly journals, books and book chapters, to preprints and conference proceedings. All publications are contextualized with linked data sets, funding, publications, patents, clinical trials, and policy documents. You can also view associated categories, funders, institutions, and researcher profiles.” https://www.dimensions.ai/products/free/

EconPapers – “Use the RePEc bibliographic and author data, providing access to the largest collection of online Economics working papers and journal articles. The majority of the full text files are freely available, but some (typically journal articles) require that you or your organization subscribe to the service providing the full text file. RePEc is a distributed data set residing in over 1100 archives operated by research organizations, academic departments and publishers.” https://econpapers.repec.org

Catalog of U.S. Government Publications (CGP) is the finding tool for federal publications that includes descriptive records for historical and current publications and provides direct links to those that are available online. Users can search by authoring agency, title, subject, and general key word, or click on “Advanced Search” to create searches that use specific fields and keywords, date ranges, formats and that are published in languages other than English. https://catalog.gpo.gov/F

Google Scholar Advanced Search – “Search across many disciplines and sources: articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions, from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other web sites.” https://www.google.com/advanced_searchhttps://scholar.google.com/

As a subset of Google Scholar, please note the following: “A Google Scholar Universal Gadget which enables users to search for the total number of citations of author(s). It provides a total citation count, total number of cited publications and Jorge E. Hirsch’s H-Index.” https://code.google.com/archive/p/citations-gadget/

Google Scholar Metrics – “Google Scholar Metrics provide an easy way for authors to quickly gauge the visibility and influence of recent articles in scholarly publications. Scholar Metrics summarize recent citations to many publications, to help authors as they consider where to publish their new research.” To get started, you can browse the top 100 publications in several languages, ordered by their five-year h-index and h-median metrics. To see which articles in a publication were cited the most and who cited them, click on its h-index number to view the articles as well as the citations underlying the metrics. https://scholar.google.com/intl/en/scholar/metrics.html

LENS.Org – “Lens serves global patent and scholarly knowledge as a public good to inform science and technology enabled problem solving. Our patent search capabilities offer advanced boolean functions, structured search, biological search, classification search, filtering and sorting options to find the most relevant and important patents. Lens serves over 200 million scholarly records, compiled and harmonised from Microsoft Academic, PubMed and Crossref, enhanced with UnPaywall open access information, CORE full text and links to ORCID. The full scholarly citation graph is provided for the first time as an open public resource.” https://www.lens.org/

MetaLib, a service of the Catalog of U.S. Government Publications is a federated search engine that searches multiple U.S. Federal government databases, retrieving reports, articles, and citations while providing direct links to selected resources available online. To learn more, view additional brief or detailed search information. https://metalib.gpo.gov/V?RN=990715120

Microsoft Academic (MA) [Please take note of a recent blog post about the Microsoft Academic website and underlying APIs that will be retired on Dec. 31, 2021] – “Microsoft Academic understands the meaning of words, it doesn’t just match keywords to content. For example, when you type “Microsoft,” it knows you mean the institution, and shows you papers authored by researchers affiliated with Microsoft. Similarly, Microsoft Academic knows journal titles, conference names, and many research topics. Try these queries to understand the power of semantic search and unleash it yourself. MA is a semantic search engine, not a keyword-based one. Traditional search engines rely mostly on keyword matching. Usually, they match the keywords you type in the search field with words found in the indexed content. The accuracy of the search results depends on the quality of the keywords you type, which puts the responsibility of a successful search on the user. MA is not limited to just searching for papers. It provides related information about the most relevant authors, institutions, publication outlets, and research areas. MA’s semantic search capabilities ensure the related information is highly relevant to the initial search. Because the technology behind MA is so different and powerful, MA enables you to quickly find answers that would take weeks to compile using keyword-based search engines.” https://academic.microsoft.com/home

OpenCitations “is an independent not-for-profit infrastructure organization for open scholarship dedicated to the publication of open bibliographic and citation data by the use of Semantic Web (Linked Data) technologies. It is also engaged in advocacy for open citations, particularly in its role as a key founding member of the Initiative for Open Citations (I4OC). For administrative convenience, OpenCitations is managed by the Research Centre for Open Scholarly Metadata at the University of Bologna. https://opencitations.net/

Semantic Scholar – Semantic Scholar applies artificial intelligence to extract the meaning from the scientific literature allowing scholars to navigate research much more efficiently than a traditional search engine.

“Social Science Research Network (SSRN) “is a world wide collaborative of over 175,000 authors and more than 1.3 million users that is devoted to the rapid worldwide dissemination of social science research. Founded in 1994, it is composed of a number of specialized research networks in each of the social sciences. Each of SSRN’s networks encourages the early distribution of research results by reviewing and distributing submitted abstracts and full text papers from scholars around the world. SSRN encourages readers to communicate directly with other subscribers and authors concerning their own and other’s research. Through our email abstracting eJournals we currently reach over 400,000 people in approximately 140 different countries. SSRN’s email abstracting eJournals cover over 1,000 different subject areas. The SSRN eLibrary consists of two parts: an Abstract Database containing abstracts on over 642,800 scholarly working papers and forthcoming papers and an Electronic Paper Collection currently containing over 348,800 downloadable full text documents in Adobe Acrobat pdf format. The eLibrary also includes the research papers of a number of Fee Based Partner Publications. To browse SSRN’s eLibrary subject area networks, click here.” SSRN´s eLibrary provides 735,258 research papers from 340,171 researchers across 30 disciplines. SSRN is owned by Elsevier / Relx. https://www.ssrn.com/en/

StartPage – “The company permits users to conduct private searches – with no tracking of your IP address or your browser information, and no storage of your search history to minimize intrusion by unsolicited commercial and non commercial enterprises. Search the web, images, video. An advanced feature is available and suggested. This site offers the user the proxy option wherein you are anonymous to the site you are visiting. The site will see the StartPage IP address, not the IP address from which your search originates. This option will slow your search experience but may be useful.” For additional information, please see the StartPage Knowledgebase. https://www.startpage.com/

USA.gov – USAGov is the Official Guide to Government Information and Services. The is the U.S. Government’s official web portal for all government transactions, services, and information. https://www.usa.gov/

The power and relevance of federated search is succinctly described as mining the deep web, and explained by the Department of Energy’s Office of Scientific & Technical Information: “WorldWideScience.org is a global science gateway comprised of national and international scientific databases and portals. WorldWideScience.org accelerates scientific discovery and progress by providing one-stop searching of databases from around the world (Architecture: What is under the Hood). Multilingual WorldWideScience.org provides real-time searching and translation of globally-dispersed multilingual scientific literature.” The WorldWideScience Alliance, a multilateral partnership, consists of participating member countries and provides the governance structure for WorldWideScience.org.”

WorldCat.org – “WorldCat is the world’s largest network of library content and services. WorldCat libraries are dedicated to providing access to their resources on the Web, where most people start their search for information including books, DVDs, CDs and articles. WorldCat connects you to the collections and services of more than 10,000 libraries worldwide.” Learn more ›› https://www.worldcat.org/

Zillow – “Zillow is the leading real estate and rental marketplace dedicated to empowering consumers with data, inspiration and knowledge around the place they call home, and connecting them with the best local professionals who can help. Zillow serves the full lifecycle of owning and living in a home: buying, selling, renting, financing, remodeling and more. It starts with Zillow’s living database of more than 110 million U.S. homes – including homes for sale, homes for rent and homes not currently on the market, as well as Zestimate home values, Rent Zestimates and other home-related information.” https://www.zillow.com/

Blog and Social Media Search

The ubiquity and power of social media is in no small measure responsible for a corresponding fall in user interest in blog specific search engines. This phenomenon correlates with the collapse of competition and choice in the web search sector – a majority of users identify and use one search engine – Google. Despite the odds, free blogs on a wide range of subject matter continue to flourish, even if they are in shadow of the social/professional media quartet: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram. Researchers should resist the temptation to abandon blogs in favor of closed, password protected, market driven ecosystems owned by Big Tech [Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple]. It is advisable to identify and subscribe to specific RSS feeds hosted by blogs to benefit from continuously updated, value-added, actionable subject matter focused content. Read the postings of authors whose professional, accurate, current, well-documented, knowledge you determine serves as an integral component of your specific CI/BI and research strategies. This strategy encompasses leveraging intelligence from all sectors so as not to rely only on a stream of information from only one giant publisher or vendor’s portfolio of products and services. Information omnivores are the norm in the CI/BI and legal research professions, with good reason. These professionals recognize the importance of engaging extensive and varied research options to build their respective tool kits to manage, maintain and deliver operationally outstanding work to their clients, users, and customers.

BoardReader – “BoardReader provides its services to you, through the Site, including its search engine services to enable you to search message boards, websites, blogs, and other social media (collectively, “Boards”).”

Justia Blawg Search – Searchable directory of legal blog postings, continually updated. Sort results by date or relevance. Browse blogs by category, country, law school. https://blawgsearch.justia.com/

Social Searcher – Free Social Media Search Engine – “Free Social Media Search Engine. It allows to search for content in social networks in real-time and provides deep analytics data. Users can search without logging in for publicly posted information on Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Instagram, Tumblr, Reddit, Flickr, Dailymotion and Vimeo. Free users can also save their searches and set up email alerts. Premium Social Monitoring features include: saving social mentions history, exporting data, API integration, advanced analytics, immediate email notifications. https://www.social-searcher.com/

Twitter is ubiquitous. When this site is used with intent, focus and discipline, it is a powerful resource for news, search and value added information from U.S. and international news sources, organizations, and subject matter experts around the world (posts are limited to a maximum of 280 characters). Use the field specific Advanced Search to focus your searches [Advanced search is available when you’re logged in to twitter.com. It allows you to tailor search results to specific date ranges, people and more. This makes it easier to find specific Tweets.] See also – How to Use Advanced Twitter Search and Usage FAQ. Twitter also has news search filters so users may search by individual names, photos, videos, news and broadcasts. The site also provides search operators for use in the advanced search modes. User name and password required, but access is free. https://twitter.com

News Search and Real Time News Video

Bloomberg News [paywall] – This is one of the premier news websites available, with real time updates that maintain a subject matter focus on the economy, finance, markets, business, technology, science and trending news (via a ticker) throughout the world. Users of the Bloomberg Terminal have access to news faster and with more comprehensive data, but this site is exemplary in its delivery of high quality analysis, data and news. Users may specify their country to focus search results. The sites includes live news broadcasts with audio. “A Bloomberg Digital subscription provides unlimited access to Bloomberg News content across any computer or device. This includes all articles, audio versions of articles, videos, podcasts and live streaming of Bloomberg Television. A Digital subscription gets you full access to content on Bloomberg.com, Bloomberg’s flagship mobile and tablet apps, and in Apple News and Google Play Newsstand. As a subscriber, you also receive special, subscriber-only newsletters, Bloomberg The Open and Bloomberg The Close, curated by our global editors and access to special content.” https://www.bloomberg.com

Financial Times [paywall] “is one of the world’s leading news organisations, recognised internationally for its authority, integrity and accuracy. It is part of Nikkei Inc., which provides a broad range of information, news and services for the global business community.” (free email updates with fee based subscription to global online content) – https://www.ft.com/home/us

Google News – In juxtaposition to the Bloomberg News presentation of data, images and visual content driven design, Google News is text driven, using multiple side bars and drop down menus to choose search options – by country, subject matter, content type, and breaking news from around the world.  News is provided in text and video formats, identified by source and also includes time stamps. Search, browse and share news, updated continuously. Users may customize/personalize the news page view according to: country/locale; topics, frequency for delivery of updates, opt-in for email and or RSS news feed alerts delivered to computer or mobile devices. See also the Google News Help page. https://www.google.com/news

Google Newspaper Archive – This project was abandoned but can still be used to access a repository of U.S. and international newspapers from time periods that range according to each specific title – from one or two year coverage to several decades of coverage. Users may browse by alphabetical title, or search for titles.  https://news.google.com/newspapers

Justia Legal News – Each story is associated with subjects and tags to enhance location of related articles. https://news.justia.com/

NewsNow “is the UK’s first and leading home-grown and independent news aggregation service. Fully-automated, and on a continuous basis, NewsNow displays breaking headlines linking to news websites all around the world. NewsNow links to tens of thousands of publications, from top news brands to alternative news sources — all on a single platform. We operate thanks to our unique filing engine, which matches breaking news articles in real time against our thousands of carefully crafted keyword-based topic specifications — delivering relevant links to users, and relevant readers to publishers, in seconds. Our website, which is among the UK’s top news destinations, is generally visited by over 14M unique monthly visitors and receives in excess of 120 million page views per month.” https://www.newsnow.co.uk/h/

Newspaperindex.com – “List of the most important online newspapers and other news sources in all countries in the world. All the newspapers focus on general news, politics, debate and economy and they are free to access online. The newspapers are chosen in order to give journalists, researcher and others an overview of how the national media edit current topics. Choose country to see the newspapers.” http://www.newspaperindex.com/

Reuters Business & Financial News – The site hosts 17 editions and languages. Users may search quotes, news, video, photos, and podcasts. Users may also choose to subscribe to topical news alerts. https://www.reuters.com/finance

Reuters – “Reuters is the news and media division of Thomson Reuters. Thomson Reuters is the world’s largest international multimedia news agency, providing investing news, world news, business news, technology news, headline news, small business news, news alerts, personal finance, stock market, and mutual funds information available on Reuters.com, video, mobile, and interactive television platforms.” User may also subscribe to the site’s | Newsletters | Podcasts | Apps. https://www.reuters.com/

Yahoo News Search [owned by Verizon Communications] – News | Politics | Sports | Finance | Entertainment | Tech |.  See also Yahoo Advanced Web Search to focus search terms, date range, file format, country, language and result requirements.

Creative Commons Search – “This search helps you find content published by authors who want you to share or reuse it, under certain conditions.” https://search.creativecommons.org

WSJ.com [paywall] – The majority of the Wall Street Journal online site is behind a paywall. Selected stories are accessible with no fee. https://www.wsj.com/. In addition, the WSJ.com publishes News & Commentary, Blogs, Video and Podcasts via RSS feeds. https://www.wsj.com

News Search, Articles and Alerts

Google Alerts – updates from Web, news, blogs, real time, videos, discussions – (frequency: as-it-happens, daily or weekly), via keyword searches created by the user. Use this FAQ to learn how to create, edit and delete your alerts. https://www.google.com/alerts

FindLaw newsletters – “…free online legal information, publishes over 40 email newsletters for consumers, business owners, and legal professionals. Whether you want the latest breaking legal document, a weekly update on the most recent cases from a particular court, or your daily legal news fix.” All of FindLaw.com’s newsletters are free, and available in HTML and plain text formats – https://newsletters.findlaw.com/

MarketWatch.com – “published by Dow Jones & Co., tracks the pulse of markets for engaged investors with more than 16 million visitors per month. The site is a leading innovator in business news, personal finance information, real-time commentary and investment tools and data, with dedicated journalists generating hundreds of headlines, stories, videos and market briefs a day from bureaus in the U.S., Europe and Asia. In addition, MarketWatch offers subscription products for investors, including Retirement Weekly and ETF Trader. MarketWatch is part of Dow Jones Media Group, which includes Barrons.com, Financial News London, Moneyish and Mansion Global.” https://www.marketwatch.com/

Mondaq – “We are a growing independent company with a great global reach. For the past 20 years we have been creating one of the world’s most comprehensive online resources of professionals’ expertise and knowledge. Mondaq includes legal, financial and regulatory information from over 70 countries – and because we’re really nice folks, we provide it to readers absolutely free.” https://www.mondaq.com/

Selected Business Info Websites and Databases – Fee and Free

Fee Based Sites and Databases

Data-Planet Statistical Datasets – “Data Planet Statistical Datasets provides easy access to an extensive repository of standardized and structured statistical data. The Data Planet repository contains more than 157 billion data points from more than 80 source organizations. The over 12.6 billion datasets in Data Planet provide immediate access to data presented in charts, maps, graphs, and table form, via multiple points of entry. With the ability to instantly chart, map, and compare billions of indicators at the county, MSA, census-tract, state, and country level, Data Planet is revolutionizing statistical research. The repository continues to grow with new content and sources selected purposefully to best meet the needs of customers.” https://homepage.data-planet.com/data-planet-statistical-datasets

LexisNexis Accurint – Subscription req’d – “A direct connection to over 65 billion current public records. Detect fraud. Verify identities. Conduct investigations.” https://www.accurint.com

Standard & Poor’s – Subscription req’d but users may view press releases and abstracted content free – “S&P Dow Jones Indices is the world’s largest, global resource for index-based concepts, data and research. Home to iconic financial market indicators, such as the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average, S&P Dow Jones Indices has over 120 years of experience constructing innovative and transparent solutions that fulfill the needs of institutional and retail investors.” https://www.standardandpoors.com/en_US/web/guest/home

ViewsWire – subscription req’d – “Every business day ViewsWire gives you the latest EIU data and briefs you on the implications of important economic, political and market developments around the world. This in-depth country analysis service draws on the EIU’s vast country intelligence databases and combines comparable country-specific data and forecasts with extensive country-intelligence assessments of key events worldwide.Sources include the full resources of The Economist Group, notably The Economist, as well as information obtained from our strategic alliances with other reputable intelligence-gathering organisations, including the BBC.The result is ViewsWire, a comprehensive, extensively researched analytical service covering politics, econom-ics, business and finance, that is updated daily and available online. https://viewswire.eiu.com/?rf=0

Free Sites – some with registration and/or fee components

AFL-CIO Executive PayWatch – “This year marks the first where nearly all S&P 500 companies have disclosed the pay ratio between their CEO and median employee. This important disclosure did not come easy. Major corporations and industry groups lobbied long and hard to hide this valuable information from shareholders and the general public. CEO-to-worker pay ratio data is important. A higher ratio could be a sign that companies suffer from a winner-take-all philosophy where executives reap the lion’s share of compensation. A lower ratio could indicate which companies were dedicated to creating high-wage jobs and investing in their employees for the company’s long-term health.” https://aflcio.org/paywatch

Best-Performing Cities – “Metropolitan areas are crucial drivers of growth in the American economy, taking different paths to prosperity depending on their industry mix, policy choices, and available resources. But while some parts of the country are thriving, others are falling behind. The Milken Institute’s Best-Performing Cities (BPC) index provides an objective benchmark for examining the underlying factors and identifying unique characteristics of economic growth in metropolitan areas. Our index uses a fact-based set of metrics such as job creation, wage gains, and technology developments to evaluate the relative growth of metropolitan areas. While national and international political and economic forces can affect near-term performance and can lie beyond a region’s control, the top-performing metros have cohesive strategies that allow them to leverage their assets more effectively. They offer important lessons that may be helpful to peer regions.”  https://www.best-cities.org/

Business Wire – “For more than 50 years, Business Wire has been the global leader in press release distribution and regulatory disclosure.” https://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/home/

CORI Contracts Database – “CORI’s K-Base library contains over 690,000 contracts. Most of the contracts in the collection are executed agreements made available in public disclosure filings or in filings with a regulatory agency. Currently, the collection is primarily drawn from filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC’s) EDGAR Database. The required disclosure filings made by publicly traded companies frequently contain contracts that are of material interest to investors. CORI has downloaded, extracted, and categorized these contract filings to make them more directly available. The collection of contracts is dated at this point and we are not currently updating with new material. We are exploring opportunities both to expand the collection and to modernize the interface to be more efficient and user-friendly, as resources become available. In addition to the primary collection, special collections that were previously available only in hardcopy are now available in the v1.1 CORI Digital Library Collection. These collections includes HMO-Physician agreements, sports stadium leases, container shipping contracts, and more, and is full-text searchable.” https://cori.missouri.edu/pages/ksearch.htm

EDGAR Full-Text Search – “This page allows you to search the full text of EDGAR filings from the last four years. The full text of a filing includes all data in the filing as well as all attachments to the filing.” https://searchwww.sec.gov/EDGARFSClient/jsp/EDGAR_MainAccess.jsp

EIU.com – “Browse our latest free reports, written by leading minds on a given region, industry or topic. From household reports such as The Global Liveability Index, to analysis pieces on the US-China trade war, our current highlights provide unparalleled insight.” https://viewswire.eu.com

Europages – “EUROPAGES is a European B2B platform in 26 languages, with 3 million registered companies, mainly manufacturers, service providers, wholesalers and distributors. Every month more than 2 million unique visitors from all over the world use the platform to search for products, services and suppliers.” https://www.europages.co.uk/

“The European Patent Register – “Welcome to the European Patent Register, the place to find procedural and legal status data on patent applications handled by the European Patent Office. If this is the first time you are consulting the EP Register, please have a look at the introductory video . Estonia joins the Federated Register. The Federated Register has started retrieving official bibliographic and legal status information from the Estonian Register and displaying it in the European Patent Register. At present, the countries participating in the Federated Register project are: Austria, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Monaco, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, San Marino, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and United Kingdom. Click here for more information on the Federated Register.” https://register.epo.org/regviewer

Fortune – The site posts rankings such as: 40 Under 40; 100 Best Companies to Work For; Fortune 500; Global 500; Most Powerful Women in Business; World’s 50 Greatest Leaders; World’s Most Admired Companies; Brainstorm Reinvent. On a daily basis Fortune publishes articles on a wide range of subjects including: energy, finance, technology, markets, automotive industry, international, careers, and healthcare. This site offers some free access as well as subscription based access to the online version of the monthly magazine. The site also publishes commentary and alerts for opt-in subscribers. https://fortune.com/

Fortune 500 visualization – “Why care about the Fortune 500? Easy: You may be looking for a new job. You might be searching for a sales lead. You could be conducting corporate research or gathering investor information. Or you just might want the bragging rights associated with being one of the top companies in the country. Below are two visualizations that allow you to explore the Fortune 500 visually. With the map, you can find the U.S. headquarters for each company on the list. On the line chart, you can see how each company has moved through the ranks over the last two decades.” https://fortune.com/fortune500/visualizations/?iid=recirc_f500landing-zone1

Forbes Lists – “Each year Forbes ranks the world based on a variety categories ranging from the wealthiest people on the planet to the best colleges America has to offer.” https://www.forbes.com/lists/list-directory/#1452e839b274

Google Finance – Continuously updated news, analysis and data available via links on the homepage – market summary, recent quotes, today’s news, sector summary, today’s movers, domestic trends – https://www.google.com/finance

Harvard Baker Library – Corporate Reports – Special Collections holds an extensive collection of corporate reports representing over 27,000 companies. This is one of the largest collections of corporate reports in the world, and includes annual reports, prospectuses, proxies, registration statements, and miscellaneous items such as brokerage-house reports, charts, and unpublished corporate histories. These holdings outline the trajectory of U.S. and international companies dating from 1820 to the present. https://www.library.hbs.edu/Find/Collections-Archives/Special-Collections/Collections/Corporate-Reports

Kyckr Online Company Search [subscription req’d] – “Online Company Search – Download official up to date company reports, annual accounts, company profiles, company director details all from Companies House Official Databases. With access to over 150 Corporate Registries worldwide and growing. Our search portal allows searching by company name or company number for Registered Companies and Company Director Information.” https://portal.kyckr.com/essregister.co.uk

Library of Congress – Selected Corporate Annual Reports Available at the Library of Congress – Corporate annual reports are an important research tool, providing a window into how a company presents itself to its investors and the public and explains its corporate performance at a particular point in time. They allow the researcher to analyze a company’s performance in light of its corporate strategies and to compare its performance to that of its competition. Reporting requirements vary by country but such reports typically contain information on financial highlights; balance sheets; profit and loss statements; new business; projections; outstanding shares of stock and information on Board Members. https://www.loc.gov/rr/business/AnnualReports/annualreports_main.html

MarketWatch.com – Dow Jones [free and fee based] Updated throughout the day – stock market quotes; news on business, financial and personal investment, economy and politics. The site also offers opt-in email updates and alerts and 12 topics.  https://www.marketwatch.com/?siteid=&avatar=seen&dist=ctmw

Moodys.com – Subscription req’d, credit ratings, research and risk analysis. Press releases and abstracts of commebtary are available free. https://www.moodys.com/

Reuters Financials – continuously updated headlines, company information, analyst research, industry watch, stocks. Some data requires registration – https://www.reuters.com/sectors/financials

SEC Info – registration req’d – data from the SEC EDGAR database. Search by Name, Industry, Business, SIC Code, Area Code, Topic, CIK, Accession Number, File Number, Date, ZIP.  “The most-sophisticated U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) EDGAR^® database service on the Web, with billions of links added to Filings, Documents & Exhibits to enable easier navigation” – https://www.secinfo.com/

Time Business – news, commentary and views on the economy, markets and business – https://time.com/business/

ThomasNet.com – Find Suppliers and Source Products – 500,000+ suppliers, 6 million products, 10 million CAD drawings, 120+ years of serving industry – https://www.thomasnet.com/

United States Patent Office – USPTO Patent Full-Text and Image Database – See also the FAQ on how to search this database.

Who Owns What in Media – Columbia Journalism Review’s guide to what the major media companies own. https://archives.cjr.org/resources/

World Industrial Reporter – “The World Industrial Reporter website brings you the latest developments in industrial innovation. These insights can help keep your business competitive in today’s global marketplace. Industrial innovation covers product introductions, new materials & technologies, plant openings, enhanced manufacturing processes, and much more. These difficult-to-find articles are brought together in one, convenient place, so you can quickly assess their impact on your business. Additional content on the World Industrial Reporter website will keep you informed on the latest trends in global markets, logistics, industrial trade shows, and supplier sourcing.” https://worldindustrialreporter.com/

Yahoo Finance – Aggregates news updates from major financial sources including: AP, CNBC, Zacks, Bloomberg, Business Insider, Reuters, MarketWatch, TheStreet. https://finance.yahoo.com/

Selected Historical Corporate Sector Data Sources

Harvard – Historic Corporate Reports – “Special Collections holds an extensive collection of corporate reports representing over 27,000 companies. This is one of the largest collections of corporate reports in the world, and includes annual reports, prospectuses, proxies, registration statements, and miscellaneous items such as brokerage-house reports, charts, and unpublished corporate histories. These holdings outline the trajectory of U.S. and international companies dating from 1820 to the present.” https://www.library.hbs.edu/Find/Collections-Archives/Special-Collections/Collections/Corporate-Reports

Selected Corporate Annual Reports Available at the Library of Congress. “Corporate annual reports are an important research tool, providing a window into how a company presents itself to its investors and the public and explains its corporate performance at a particular point in time. They allow the researcher to analyze a company’s performance in light of its corporate strategies and to compare its performance to that of its competition. Reporting requirements vary by country but such reports typically contain information on financial highlights; balance sheets; profit and loss statements; new business; projections; outstanding shares of stock and information on Board Members. The sources listed may be useful in identifying corporate annual reports available for use at the Library of Congress.” https://www.loc.gov/rr/business/AnnualReports/annualreports_main.html

DealBook by the New York Times – Topics include: Mergers & Acquisitions, Venture Capital, Private Equity, Hedge Funds, IPO Offerings, Venture Capital, Legal/Regulatory – https://www.nytimes.com/section/business/dealbook

footnoted* “is a highly acclaimed information service that uses proprietary search techniques to find both hidden opportunities and early signs of potential problems buried deep in routine SEC filings.Led by author, reporter, and SEC filings expert Michelle Leder, footnoted* focuses on the actionable details that really matter in the hundreds of thousands of pages that are filed with the SEC day in and day out. Leder and her team of analysts then start to build a mosaic based on multiple filings to provide insight that is typically three to six months ahead of the market. Subscribers to footnoted* can customize their portfolio to receive updates on tickers in their portfolio or receive all alerts. We also offer a special “Friday Night Dump” email alert that focuses on filings made after the market closes on Friday afternoons. https://www.footnoted.com/

Real Time Economics – “Exclusive news, analysis and commentary on the U.S. and global economy, central bank policy and economics” from the Wall Street Journal (fee). https://blogs.wsj.com/economics/

Seeking Alpha – “We are an industry leader in mining the wisdom of the crowds for insights on every topic of interest to investors. Our editors curate content from a network of stock analysts, traders, economists, academics, financial advisors and industry experts — all who engage in our community. 13.3 million+ visitors come to us not only to consume content, but to contribute and to participate in the conversation. The depth and breadth of our content is unmatched, with 8,700+ tickers covered and 8,200+ articles and earnings transcripts published every month, driving industry-leading engagement. Our content includes curated news, research, opinion and discussion from our editorial team of 53 in addition to 16,000+ individual and corporate contributors.” https://seekingalpha.com/

Selected Online People and Company Location Sources

Accurint (owned by LexisNexis – subscription only) provides access to millions of data records on individuals and businesses – https://www.accurint.com

Ancestry.com – “genealogy, family trees and family history records online,” fee req’d – https://www.ancestry.com/

FamilySearch.org – “FamilySearch is the largest genealogy organization in the world. For over 100 years, FamilySearch has been actively gathering, preserving, and sharing genealogical records worldwide. Patrons may freely access our resources and service online at FamilySearch.org, or through over 4,500 family history centers in 70 countries, including the renowned Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah.” Users may search and view some data free, but fees do apply for many records. https://www.ancestry.com/

FindLaw Search for a Lawyer or for a Law Firm – “Are you facing a legal issue, or just looking for more information about a specific legal topic? FindLaw’s Learn About the Law section is the perfect starting point. Learn About the Law features informational articles about a wide variety of legal topics, as well as specific information about subjects such as how to hire an attorney and understanding your state’s unique laws.” https://lawyers.findlaw.com/

Forbes Business offers three editions – US – Asia – Europe. The Forbes Lists and Rankings include significant information on individuals, companies, and a wide spectrum of business, sports, entertainment and employment sectors in the U.S. and around the world. https://www.forbes.com/#4de1a032254c

Google – Search: the web, images, news, videos, maps, travel, food, transportation, art, healthcare and more. https://www.google.com

Infobel – “Kapitol is the publisher of Infobel products specializing in B2B and online services. With a global digital platform, Kapitol-Infobel publishes and continually updates a database of some 350 million telephone subscribers and 186 million businesses worldwide. Operating throughout the world, Kapitol-Infobel also offers numerous B2B solutions including a large range of products and services that allows customers to get or improve, use data for the purposes of publication, marketing, advertising, and other data purpose. Established in 1995, Kapitol is the first business worldwide to have developed and published an online telephone directory.” https://www.infobel.com/

Justia Lawyer Directory – Find Attorneys, Law Firms, Legal Aid and Legal Services around the country. https://www.justia.com/lawyers

Martindale.com – “Martindale-Hubbell offers a full suite of online products and services that help lawyers enhance their online presence and drive more prospects to their firm. Lawyers showcase their credentials and win new business with:

• Professional profiles on Martindale.com®, Lawyers.com^SM and Nolo.com, where more than 15 million consumers monthly research their legal options
• Law firm websites that convert clients designed by a company with experience building or hosting more than 40,000 lawyer websites
• Pay-Per-Click, Social Media and SEO services proven to increase visibility and credibility
• Martindale-Hubbell Ratings & Reviews…” https://www.martindale.com

Search Systems – “…your guide to Free Public Records. We’re a family-owned business established in 1990 that has worked since 1996 to take the guesswork out of finding public record information online.We’ve personally located, analyzed, described, and organized links to over 70,000 databases by type and location to help you find property, criminal, court, birth, death,marriage, divorce records, licenses, deeds, mortgages, corporate records, business registration, and many other public record resources quickly, easily, and for free.” https://publicrecords.searchsystems.net/

Zaba Search – Free People Search and Public Information Search Engine [uses data from Intellus]. https://www.zabasearch.com/

Television and Radio News Transcripts – including streaming audio/video [Fee and Free]

Bloomberg.com Live – 24-hour business and financial news via Bloomberg. Free and Fee. Includes video, live radio programs and featured podcasts. Topics include: Markets, Tech, Politics, Opinion, BusinessWeek. https://www.bloomberg.com/live

CBSNews.com – Along with breaking news headlines and stories, the site links to investigative shows and news programs, as well as video, on a range of topics including: politics, healthcare, the economy, education, technology – national and international stories are profiled. https://www.cbsnews.com/

Critical Mention – Fee Only – “Critical Mention captures and indexes 40 hours of broadcast content every 60 seconds from more than 2,000 unique broadcast sources producing a robust database of more than 16 million searchable segments, all available in broadcast quality definition and in real-time.” Subscription only. https://www.criticalmention.com/media-monitoring/

Federal News Service – “Federal News Network is the key source of breaking news, information and analysis for the people who support the missions of federal agencies. Federal News Network addresses federal agency managers, policy makers and contractors. Our mission is to help federal managers meet their mission. Our news coverage is non-partisan, non-political and designed to help executives more clearly understand and make better decisions about issues affecting their agencies and their companies. Federal News Network broadcasts on 1500 AM throughout the Greater Metropolitan Washington area. FederalNewsNework.com distributes government-to-government and business-to-government news and information worldwide.” https://federalnewsnetwork.com/

Google Video search – https://www.google.com/videohp. See also YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/, owned by Google.

Yahoo! Video Search – “Yahoo! Video allows you to search millions of videos from across the Web.” https://video.search.yahoo.com/

ShadowTV [Subscription req’d] – “Servicing clients since 1999, ShadowTV is located in the historic Film Center building in the heart of New York City. The company is known as a leader in developing cutting edge technologies, and created the first real-time video streaming technology. ShadowTV is the fastest, easiest-to-use media monitoring service. We provide access to all the news coverage you need: TV, Internet, Print and Radio. From Wall Street to the White House, Madison Avenue to Hollywood, ShadowTV is used to monitor news for competitive intelligence, shareholder relations, brand management and media crisis strategy. Corporate communications directors, publicists, broadcast executives and feature film producers, print and network news writers and researchers, entertainment and political figures all rely on ShadowTV’s reports and alerts.” https://www.shadowtv.com/

TVEyes – The Search Engine for Broadcast – “Founded in 1999, TVEyes’s mission is to be the global search engine for TV and radio coverage. No matter where it appears in the world, if it aired on TV, you’ll find it on TVEyes. The TVEyes Content Intelligence Platform combines human supervision, artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques to analyze broadcast and online video. By combining language-specific automated speech recognition, image recognition, and industry-leading video search technology, TVEyes turns unstructured audio/video content into highly structured, actionable intelligence. The TVEyes Content Intelligence Platform can be utilized to:

• identify and report on logo and product placement appearances in broadcast and online video
• track placement of advertising in broadcast media
• create custom applications utilizing object recognition from any video feed..” Subscription Only. https://www.tveyes.com

Tyndall Report Year in Review – “The Tyndall Report monitors the weekday nightly newscasts of the three American broadcast television networks: ABC World News with David Muir (formerly Charles Gibson and subsequently Diane Sawyer), CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley (formerly Katie Couric) and NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt (formerly Brian Williams). Each day, Andrew Tyndall blogs the three newscasts. He has been monitoring television news for 20 years. He claims to be the only person on the planet who has personally watched every single weekday network nightly newscast since the summer of 1987. Other people go on vacation: he records them all and logs the news he missed into his database when he returns.” https://tyndallreport.com/

Vanderbilt Television News Archive – “The mission of the Vanderbilt Television News Archive focuses on creating, preserving and providing access to the news broadcasts from the U.S. national television networks. We create recordings of news broadcasts from the U.S. national television networks, preserve the content for future generations, and provide the widest access possible within the copyright limitations. We have been recording these broadcasts since August 5, 1968. The core of our collection consists of regularly scheduled newscasts from ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and Fox News. We also record other news content as it happens beyond these newscasts, including material from other networks.” https://tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/

YouTube [owned by Google – the site tracks and collects user data] – “Founded in February 2005, YouTube allows billions of people to discover, watch and share originally-created videos. YouTube provides a forum for people to connect, inform, and inspire others across the globe and acts as a distribution platform for original content creators and advertisers large and small.” https://www.youtube.com/

Legislative Monitoring and Tracking

CQ Roll Call (Subscription req’d – owned by FiscalGroup) – Congressional news, insights, analysis, legislative tracking, members and votes, advocacy tools. Legislative tracking and monitoring service offers users the ability to create customized delivery of services, including time sensitive alerts and updates, via website, email updates, and RSS. Bill tracking and monitoring, daily links to HotDocs, full-text CRS reports. https://info.cq.com/legislative-tracking/cq-federal/

C-SPAN – “C-SPAN is a private, non-profit public service of the cable television industry that covers the political process. C-SPAN receives no funding from any government. C-SPAN’s operating revenues come from license fees paid by cable systems and satellite companies that offer the network to their customers. C-SPAN provides access to the live gavel-to-gavel proceedings of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, and to other forums where public policy is discussed, debated and decided–all without editing, commentary or analysis and with a balanced presentation of points of view.” C-SPAN provides video, TV, radio and text based content. Video files are searchable. https://www.c-span.org/

Congress.gov – From the Library of Congress, legislative information, status of legislation, links to committee reports. You can search Congress.gov using the search bar available on most pages, a collection-specific search form, or advanced search. Advanced search gives you the option of using a form optimized for legislation, a query builder for customized searches, or a command line entry box for using SOLR query syntax. Additional help on searching is listed on the left. Use fields to control where your search term or phrase is found in a document. Field searching is available from the search bar and the advanced search command line. Expand the accordion below for a complete list of fields, search operators, and examples. https://www.congress.gov/

Congress.org – “Congress.org [owned by CQRollCall] is a non-partisan website dedicated to building a knowledge base for professionals wishing to better engage their communities. Highlighting the latest trends, success stories, effective or creative implementations and more, professionals from a whole host of backgrounds, whether in marketing, government affairs, communications or otherwise, can share their knowledge and gain insight from the larger advocacy community. Congress.org embraces that advocacy has evolved – a letter writing campaign should no longer be considered an organization’s only option for effective legislator outreach. We look to help readers lead within the new paradigm, one that recognizes that consistent stakeholder education and involvement will lead to better results. Positioning your group as the trust worthy thought leader in the arena will only help as your issues evolve today and into the future.” https://www.congress.org

GovTrack.us – “GovTrack.us tracks the United States Congress and helps Americans participate in their national legislature. We publish the status of federal legislation, information about your representative and senators in Congress including voting records, and original research on legislation and congressional oversight & investigations. We’re one of the oldest government transparency websites in the world. Use GovTrack to track bills for updates by getting alerts and understand the broader context of legislation through our statistical analyses. Read our original research on GovTrack Insider and in our congressional misconduct database. You can read more about the data we have, including how you can get it. GovTrack was the first to create comprehensive open data about Congress, and we have successfully lobbied Congress to make more and better legislative information available to the public.” https://www.govtrack.us/

Roll Call – Graphics and photos drive this iteration of a print news journal, with continuously updated news (free and fee access versions) to daily online articles on policy, politics, including opinion/analysis (partisan), videos, podcasts and alerts – https://www.rollcall.com/

The Hill.com – Continuously updated news and views (very partisan) on legislation, legislators, politics, policy and the White House. The site hosts 6 topical blogs as well as alerts, podcasts, video and of course a Twitter feed. https://thehill.com/

E-Newsletters, Online Newspapers, Journals and News Sources

Biz Journals – (Subscription required – some content is free) “American City Business Journals (ACBJ) is the largest publisher of metropolitan business newsweeklies in the United States, with 43 business publications across the country reaching more than 3.6 million readers each week. We also offer specialty publications for sports fans, sports business readers and classic car enthusiasts.” https://www.bizjournals.com/?t=1496095488

Bloomberg – This is one of the premier news websites available, with real time updates that maintain a subject matter focus on the economy, finance, markets, business, technology, science and trending news (via a ticker) throughout the world. Users of the Bloomberg Terminal have access to news faster and with more comprehensive data, but the free components of this site are exemplary in the delivery of high quality analysis, data and news. Users may specify their country to focus search results. The sites includes live live news broadcasts with audio. https://www.bloomberg.com

CNNBusiness – Topical articles on business, tech, market, media, personal investment. https://www.cnn.com/business

Financial Times – Subscription req’d – email updates and RSS feeds available to subscribers. Daily blog updates, video and podcasts. Comprehensive coverage of global markets, politics, the economy, Fintech. https://www.ft.com/

Forbes – video network, features, blogs, columns, special reports – Europe, US and Asia. Search people, companies, lists. Content is organized into subject matter: Billionaires; Innovation; Leadership; Money; Consumer; Industry; Lifestyle. See also the Forbes Search feature.

Fortune – “Fortune 500 – Daily and Breaking Business News. Rankings [Fortune 500, Global 500, 40 Under 40]; Magazine; Newsletters; Video; Conferences. https://fortune.com/

Google Finance – Market Summary, Today’s Headlines, Company Facts and Financials, Related company data, a Company Summary, Management info, blog posts and links to topical discussions. Includes Advanced Search Feature. https://www.google.com/finance

Investor’s Business Daily – “Investor’s Business Daily provides exclusive stock lists, investing data, stock market research, education and the latest financial and business news to help investors make more money in the stock market. https://www.investors.com/

The Deal, Subscription req’d. “The Deal is an intelligence service that provides actionable information on deals and dealmakers, offering over 100,000 users the unique opportunity to identify potential deals and target dealmakers to accelerate revenue generation.” https://www.thedeal.com/

Time Business – News and views on the economy, markets and business – https://time.com/business

Wall Street Journal – https://online.wsj.com/home-page: registered subscribers may opt-in for email updates, RSS, customized homepage, company and industry news trackers. Each day some articles are available free to readers without a subscription. All WSJ blogs, updated daily, provide reliable news and analysis with links to primary documents, and all are free via https://blogs.wsj.com. There are also corresponding Twitter and RSS feeds.

Yahoo! Finance – market summaries, currencies, videos, quotes, rates, news features, opinions. https://finance.yahoo.com/

Monitoring Trends, Companies and Products – Selected News Aggregators, RSS Feeds, Blog Search Engines

News Aggregators

BBC News Feeds – Popular BBC news feeds, global and UK news feeds, video and audio feeds – services for mobile, connected TV, alerts, e-mail news. https://www.bbc.com/news/10628494?rss=http://news.bbc.co.uk/rss/newsonline_world_edition/front_page/rss091.xml

Financial Times – RSS and Twitter feeds – Subscription req’d https://www.ft.com/myft

MarketWatch – “MarketWatch is providing some of its popular feeds in RSS format for personal, non-commercial use by individuals only. The feeds are free of charge for use by individuals, as long as the feeds are used for such individual’s personal, non-commercial use. Attribution to MarketWatch, which is included in each feed, is required.” https://www.marketwatch.com/rss/default.asp

New York Times Times Topics feeds [archived] collected news, reference, photos, graphics, audio and video on thousands of subjects, covering material published since 1981.” https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/index.html

PR Newswire (Cision) – Access releases, photos, ProfNet experts and customized feeds just for the media. https://www.prnewswire.com/rss/

Wall Street Journal Digital Network RSS Feeds – (Subscription req’d to read full text articles) http://www.wsj.com/public/page/rss_news_and_feeds

Washington Post RSS Feeds – The RSS feeds on several dozen national and international topics are provided free to readers. https://www.washingtonpost.com/discussions/2018/10/12/washington-post-rss-feeds/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.5dbe768b7568

Yahoo! News – Latest News & Headlines – http://news.yahoo.com/rss

Identification of Company Legal Representation

ALM’s surveys, rankings and data are an essential resource for knowledge managers, firm leadership and anyone seeking to better understand the legal market, the firms that comprise it, and the issues and challenges endemic to both.Law.com Surveys and Rankings – Subscription req’d. https://www.law.com/rankings/

Corporate Counsel Subscription req’d (ALM) – “A rich selection of articles curated by ALM’s expert editorial team from across ALM’s national and regional publications, featuring leading voices in the legal field. Law.com is the premiere source for trusted and timely legal news and analysis. Subscribers to the site can access stories from across ALM’s national and regional publications, with the opportunity to view news by practice area. Each practice area offers a rich selection of articles, curated by ALM’s expert editorial team. In addition, Law.com features views from leading voices in the legal field through the Law.com Contributor Network.” https://www.law.com/corpcounsel/

LexisNexis CourtLink Subscription req’d – “Harness data from millions of dockets. On-demand court records, tracking and alerts, new civil records, criminal records, federal and state. Satisfyingly simple court case searches fill you in on all the players too” – (fee) https://www.lexisnexis.com/en-us/products/courtlink-for-corporate-or-professionals.page

Comprehensive, annotated, up-to-date case law for state and federal jurisdictions, as well a hundreds of current and archival databases on law, government documents, news, and journals via Lexis or ThomsonReutersWestlaw

Verdict Search [fee based] – 200,000+ Cases | National & State Coverage | Updated Daily | Plaintiff & Defense Case-Winning Information http://verdictsearch.com/

Note: Law firm websites are a major source of strategic corporate intelligence – firm, practice, and client specific biographies, press releases, news alerts, topical blogs – be sure to track and monitor information from within this range of publications after you identify specific value added content.

Martindale.com – Search for lawyers, law firms and organizations, groups and topics, jobs. Results provide name, law firm, job title, link to website with bio and contact info is provided in many instances, city/state/county, telephone number. https://www.martindale.com/

Pacer – “Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) is an electronic public access service that allows users to obtain case and docket information online from federal appellate, district, and bankruptcy courts, and the PACER Case Locator. PACER is provided by the Federal Judiciary in keeping with its commitment to providing public access to court information via a centralized service.” Requires username and password – fees apply – https://www.pacer.gov/

Secretary of State and Other Business Filings Databases, published by LLRX.com – “All 50 states make some level of corporate and business filings available online. In a few instances only limited information (such as name availability) is retrievable. The majority of the states, however, use their Web presence to disseminate a range of public business records — and many offer access at no charge.” https://www.llrx.com/2009/12/research-roundup-business-filings-databases-updated/

SECInfo.com [free and fee] – “99% of what is important in U.S. business must be filed at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). But much of what is filed is not very important. SEC Info helps you quickly find what is important to you. Our information is not just about securities, it is business intelligence about public companies and their owners. SEC Info is not simply about finding SEC Filings. It is about extracting the useful information in SEC Filings and organizing it to make it easily accessible to you. We do this in many ways, to save you time and effort. SEC Filings by themselves are static stand-alone documents. SEC Info’s artificial-intelligence parsing engine understands the content and context of SEC Filings, and it does two things: It parses the content of Filings and, understanding context, updates our “entity” database, the most sophisticated SEC Filings database in the world. It then “webifies” the Filings’ Documents, by adding billions of links, so that, if you are reading a Document and encounter a reference to another Filing or to something in our database, you can click to get more information.” https://www.secinfo.com/

Trademark Electronic Search System, USPTO – https://www.uspto.gov/trademark

Thomson Reuters Westlaw CourtExpress – dockets and document retrieval services for state and federal jurisdictions – subscription/fee only, https://legal.thomsonreuters.com/en/products/court-express

USPTO Patent Full-Text and Image Database (PatFT) – https://www.uspto.gov/patents-application-process/search-patents

Selected Online Tools for Competitor Monitoring

Website Trackers

“Domain Tools has been tracking the whois history of millions of domains since 2000. Domain History gives you access to our massive database of historical whois records. Supported TLDs are .com, .net, .org, .biz, .us, and .info. DomainTools offers an historical lookup of registrations back to 2001.” https://research.domaintools.com/

InfoMinder – InfoMinder is a hosted subscription service that allows you to track changes to web pages, blogs, RSS feeds and wikis – https://www.infominder.com

MarkMonitor – (fee) “When you trust MarkMonitor with your brand, you enjoy the unique advantage of our long history in brand protection. An ICANN-accredited domain registrar since our beginnings in 1999 during the dot-com boom, MarkMonitor now serves 1,300+ customers in 50+ countries.” https://www.markmonitor.com

VisualPing (free and fee versions available) – “We enable people, small and big companies to automate website checks. 1 million users, 3 billion checks, 500 million changes notified”. https://visualping.io/cdlp.html

WebSite Watcher – (fee) monitor websites for updates and changes – https://www.aignes.com/

Web2Mail Lite – read, receive and browse the web by email – https://www.web2mail.com/lite/welcome.php

Westlaw and LexisNexis

Benchmarking – Law, Corporate, Government, Market Data

American Bar Association (ABA) Statistics on the Legal Profession [fee] – https://www.americanbar.org/about_the_aba/profession_statistics/

American Lawyer – Subscription req’d (law firm and lawyer surveys, reports, articles, market data) – https://www.law.com/americanlawyer

USA.gov Small Business – “The U.S. Commercial Service is the trade promotion unit of the International Trade Administration. U.S. Commercial Service trade specialists in 107 U.S. cities and in more than 80 countries work with your company to help you get started in exporting or increase your sales to new global markets.” https://www.usa.gov/business?source=busa

Canadian Business – News, Growth 500, Best Managed Companies, MBA Guide. https://www.canadianbusiness.com/

Chambers and Partners (fee and free) – “Searchable database of the top lawyers in 175 countries, providing independent rankings and editorial commentary” Researching Outstanding Lawyers Globally – Definitive client insights from over 200 research analysts- https://www.chambers.com

FRASER (Federal Reserve Archival System for Economic Research) – FRASER is a digital library of U.S. economic, financial, and banking history—particularly the history of the Federal Reserve System. Providing economic information and data to the public is an important mission for the St. Louis Fed started by former St. Louis Fed Research Director Homer Jones in 1958. FRASER began as a data preservation and accessibility project of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis in 2004 and now provides access to data and policy documents from the Federal Reserve System and many other institutions. Part of this mission includes seeking out a wide range of historical materials. For a detailed overview of the scope of the FRASER collection, see the Collection Development Policy or this list of highlighted content. In some cases, there are gaps in collections that we strive to fill. Our Needs List identifies the specific documents needed to complete collections already on FRASER, as well as materials we have not yet digitized but would like to. To better inform our users, our staff occasionally add digital material to FRASER from other sources such as the Internet Archive and the American Memory program of the Library of Congress in order to provide further context for materials digitized for FRASER. FRASER can be used in conjunction with other Federal Reserve resources, including FRED, ALFRED, the Federal Reserve History website, and curriculum materials developed by the Fed’s economic education staff. To connect the public to our free economic history materials, our staff also add links to FRASER resources from relevant Wikipedia pages. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/

Fortune 500 annual ranking of America’s largest corporations – use the drop down menu to access archival data from 1955 to present – https://fortune.com/fortune500/

“The IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook (WCY) “is the world’s most renowned and comprehensive annual report on the competitiveness of nations, ranking and analyzing how a nation’s environment creates and sustains the competitiveness of enterprises…it measures 57 countries on the basis of 329 criteria.” https://www.imd.org/wcc/world-competitiveness-center/

Economic Indicators – “Available from April 1995 forward, this monthly publication is prepared by the Council of Economic Advisers for the Joint Economic Committee. It provides economic information on gross domestic product, income, employment, production, business activity, prices, money, credit, security markets, Federal finance, and international statistics. Economic Indicators back to 1948 are made available through FRASER, the Federal Reserve Archival System for Economic Research. FRASER is provided through a partnership between GPO and the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. FRASER is not an official version of Economic Indicators and GPO can not guarantee the authenticity or completeness of the data. About Economic Indicators. https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/browse/collection.action?collectionCode=ECONI

U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis – “The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis is your source of accurate and objective data about the nation’s economy. What We Do – BEA’s economists produce some of the world’s most closely watched statistics, including U.S. gross domestic product, better known as GDP. We do state and local numbers, too, plus foreign trade and investment stats and industry data. https://www.bea.gov/

• Economic Accounts: Descriptions of BEA’s principal programs and activities
• Who Uses BEA Measures? Information on the primary users of BEA’s economic accounts
• We’ve Got Your Number: A quick guide to BEA and its data.

Country Profiles

BBC News Country Profiles – “Full profiles provide an instant guide to history, politics and economic background of countries and territories, and background on key institutions. They also include audio and video clips from BBC archives. Select a country, territory or international organisation from the menus below.” https://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/country_profiles/default.stm

CIA World Factbook – “The World Factbook provides information on the history, people, government, economy, geography, communications, transportation, military, and transnational issues for 267 world entities. Our Reference tab includes: maps of the major world regions, as well as Flags of the World, a Physical Map of the World, a Political Map of the World, a World Oceans map, and a Standard Time Zones of the World map.” https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/index.html

Economist.com – Topics Index with short abstracts – “News, country profiles, forecasts, statistics” on more than 80 countries. https://www.economist.com/topics

Doing Business – Measuring Business Regulation – World Bank Group: “The Doing Business project provides objective measures of business regulations for local firms in 190 economies and selected cities at the subnational level.” https://www.doingbusiness.org/

Index Mundi – “IndexMundi contains detailed country statistics, charts, and maps compiled from multiple sources. You can explore and analyze thousands of indicators organized by region, country, topic, industry sector, and type.” https://www.indexmundi.com/

Library of Congress Country Studies – “This series of profiles of foreign nations is part of the Country Studies Program…The profiles offer brief, summarized information on a country’s historical background, geography, society, economy, transportation and telecommunications, government and politics, and national security.” https://www.loc.gov/collections/country-studies/about-this-collection/

World Bank’s Open Data – “The World Bank’s Open Data initiative is intended to provide all users with access to World Bank data, according to the Open Data Terms of Use. The data catalog is a listing of available World Bank datasets, including databases, pre-formatted tables, reports, and other resources.” https://datacatalog.worldbank.org/

World Competitiveness Center – “We are dedicated to the advancement of knowledge on world competitiveness by offering benchmarking services for countries and companies using the latest and most relevant data on the subject.” https://www.imd.org/wcc/world-competitiveness-center/

IGO and NGO Portals – Think Tanks

American Policy Directory – University of Oregon. Find analysis and advocacy from all perspectives on US national public policy. https://library.uoregon.edu/govdocs/apd

Human Rights Library “Welcome to the online Human Rights Library at the University of Minnesota Law School. This digital library contains thousands of human rights materials and resources from around the world that are free and accessible to everyone. This unique resource was established in the 1990s at a time when very few materials were available electronically. Scholars, students, advocates, and the media have been able to use the Human Rights Library as a resource for almost thirty years.” https://www.law.umn.edu/human-rights-center/research/human-rights-library

International Organizations, United States Institute of Peace – Listed alphabetically by name – https://www.usip.org/publications/international-organizations

NGO Research Guide, Duke University Libraries – “The selection of NGOs listed here primarily reflects the research interests of Duke researchers and students and is not comprehensive or representative of the universe of NGOs throughout the United States or the world.” – https://library.duke.edu/research/subject/guides/ngo_guide/ngo_database

Think Tank Search – Harvard University – “Think Tank Search is a custom Google search of over 1200 think tank websites. For the purposes of this search, think tanks are defined as institutions affiliated with universities, governments, advocacy groups, foundations, non-governmental organizations, and businesses that generate public policy research, analysis, and activity. Inclusion is based upon the relevancy of subject area to HKS coursework and scholarship, the availability of the think tank’s research in full-text on the website, and the think tank’s reputation and influence upon policy making. The list represents a mixture of partisan and non-partisan think tanks.” https://guides.library.harvard.edu/hks/think_tank_search

TTCSP Global Go To Think Tank Index Reports – The Global Go To Think Tank Index is the result of an international survey of over 1,950 scholars, public and private donors, policy makers, and journalists who helped rank more than 6,500 think tanks using a set of 18 criteria developed by the TTCSP. The current index is – 2019 Global Go To Think Tank Index Report, James G. McGann.

Worldwide NGO Directory – “The World Association of Non-Governmental Organizations (WANGO) is an international organization uniting NGOs worldwide in the cause of advancing peace and global well being. WANGO helps to provide the mechanism and support needed for NGOs to connect, partner, share, inspire, and multiply their contributions to solve humanity’s basic problems. Initiated in 2000 by a handful of international NGOs and prominent visionaries, WANGO has quickly become one of the premier international bodies for non-governmental organizations that are committed to the ideals of universal peace, justice, and well being for all humanity. Concerned with universal values shared across the barriers of politics, culture, religion, race and ethnicity, the founding organizations and individuals envisioned an organization that would enable NGOs to work in partnership across those barriers, thereby weaving a selfless social fabric essential to establishing a worldwide culture of peace. By optimizing resources and sharing vital information, WANGO provides a means for NGOs to become more effective in completing their vital tasks. With its global network of NGOs, as well as affiliates drawn from the ranks of governmental and intergovernmental bodies, business, and universities, WANGO has become an international leader in tackling issues of serious global concern. Click on the region on the map, or click on the region name below the map to list organizations.” https://www.wango.org/resources.aspx?section=ngodir

Research Directories and Portals

A to Z Index of the Business Reference Services Web Site (Library of Congress) – http://www.loc.gov/rr/business/azindex.html

CEO Express – “CEOExpress filters and organizes the content executives need, while adding features that make their lives even more streamlined and efficient.” Fee and free, with links to dozens of reliable business, industry, news and and topical resources – https://www.ceoexpress.com/

globalEdge – your source for global business knowledge – “This directory takes a broad approach to international business research by providing resources across a wide range of topics via Michigan State University.” https://globaledge.msu.edu/reference-desk

Editor’s Note: This guide was first published on November 20, 2005. Completely revised and updated by Sabrina I. Pacifici on: March 15, 2006, October 13, 2006, January 15, 2007, June 19, 2007, September 28, 2007, March 15, 2008, June 1, 2008, March 28, 2009, October 11, 2009, June 2, 2010, January 2011, March 2011, July 2011, December 2011, July 2012, September 2013, August 8, 2014, December 18, 2015, June 2, 2017 and December 31, 2018, January 31, 2020 and May 24, 2021.