AltaVista
Search tool owned by Yahoo! Inc. Indexes about 250 million web pages. You can select the language of the retrieved pages (e.g. search only for pages in German). There are many localised versions of AltaVista for different countries in Europe, the Asia–Pacific region and the Americas.
www.altavista.com
Ask Jeeves
You input a question (e.g. What size is the market for family cars in Denmark?) and the engine tries to match it with a list of questions it calculates may be similar to yours, and you choose the nearest. You can see thumbnail previews of search results.
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Examines over 2 billion web pages, and offers additional features such as auto- matic translation. There are many localised versions of Google for different countries in Europe, the Asia–Pacific region and the Americas.
www.google.com
Lycos
Indexes about 50 million pages using Ask Jeeves search engine. There are also localised versions for many European countries, including Germany, France, the UK, Belgium, Sweden. You may get routed automatically to the one with the same country code as you.
www.lycos.com
Teoma
Owned by Ask Jeeves, suggests ways to refine a search and clusters results into relevant groupings.
www.teoma.com
Web.de – Deutschland im Internet (German language)
Directory of German websites, which can be searched or browsed. Business section has news headlines, information from stock exchange.
web.de
Yahoo!
Yahoo! has local versions (e.g. Yahoo! UK & Ireland, Yahoo Deutschland, Yahoo! France).
www.yahoo.com
Multiple search engines
These are meta-search engines that search a number of the most popular single search engines and retrieve the best combined results.
Apollo 7
A German meta-search engine searching 11 engines, mainly German. www.apollo7.de
Dogpile
Defaults to search LookSmart, GoTo.com, Dogpile Web Catalog, Dogpile Open Directory, Direct Hit, About.com, InfoSeek, Real Names, AltaVista, Lycos and Yahoo!.
www.dogpile.com
ixquick
Searches 12 search engines, including All the Web, LookSmart, Hotbot, Netscape and Overture. There are also localised versions for many European countries, including Germany, Denmark, the UK, Belgium, Sweden.
Vivisimo
Matches responses from major search engines and automatically organises the pages into categories.
vivisimo.com
Directories of search engines
In order to identify other search engines, the following websites list available search engines as well as sources of business information.
Searchability
Describes various search engines, grouped by category. www.searchability.com
Search Engine Watch
Links to search engines and directories with guidelines, arranged by category. www.searchenginewatch.com
Directories
In addition to search engines, there are a range of electronic directoriesavailable to the marketing researcher. Directories are helpful for identifying individuals or organisations relevant to a particular research study. They may be available in printed format, CD-ROMs or on the Internet. Some of the directories available on the Internet are listed in the next box.
International directories Dun & Bradstreet
Site includes a worldwide directory of 75 million companies and a UK direc- tory. Charges are made for detailed listings from the directories.
www.dnb.com
Financial Times company briefings
A subscription service giving basic details plus some financials of 18,000 major companies in 50 countries.
www.ft.com
Kompass
Directory of 19 million companies in 70 countries worldwide. Search by prod- uct or company. You get address, phone and telephone number free for all companies, and for selected companies you can get a more detailed profile. www.kompass.com
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Telephone Directories on the Web
Listing of yellow pages sites worldwide. http://www.infobel.com/teldir/
Austria: Compnet.at
Directory of 180,000 Austrian companies. www.compnet.at
Austria: Herold gelbe Seiten im Internet (German language)
Austrian yellow pages directory of 290,000 firms. www.herold.at
Belgium: Top Business (German or English language)
Directory of Belgian companies, associations and professionals. www.topbusiness.be
Denmark: Publicom (Danish language)
Official register of Danish companies. www.publi-com.dk
Europe: Ask Alix
Directory of 22 million companies in 15 European countries. Search by key- word, name or town. Companies that have purchased priority listings get higher ranking. Linked to Multimap.Com location maps.
www.askalix.com /uk
Europages: The European Business Directory (multilingual)
Includes well-established directory of basic details of 500,000 companies from 30 European countries, searchable by name or product.
www.europages.com /home-en.html
Europe: Thomas Global Register of European Manufacturers
Directory of 210,000 companies in 21 countries in Europe. www.tremnet.com
Europe: Wer liefert was? (Multilingual)
WLW is a directory of 340,000 firms and their products. Covers Belgium, Finland, Germany, Italy, Croatia, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Austria, Sweden, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Slovakia, the UK, and France.
www.wlw.de
France: Bottin (French language)
Directory of French companies. www.bottin.fr
France: Les pages jaunes (French or English language)
Yellow pages directory, white pages and trademark pages. www.pagesjaunes.fr
France: Pages Pro (French or English language)
Directory of 600,000 businesses from France Telecom. www.pagespro.com
France: Telexport (French or English language)
Directory of 40,000 French exporters and importers, from the Paris Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
www.telexport.tm.fr
Germany: Teleauskunft (German, French or English language)
German white pages directory and yellow pages telephone directory. www.teleauskunft.de
Greece: Everesi
An English-language directory of Greek companies with websites. www.evresi.gr
Greece: Greek Telephone Directories
Includes yellow pages directory in Greek or English and white pages in Greek only.
www.xo.gr
Ireland: Golden Pages
Yellow pages directory. www.goldenpages.ie
Italy: Pagine gialle online (Multilingual)
Directory has basic details of 3 million Italian businesses, with simple product classification. Searchable by name, address, product category, etc.
www.paginegialle.it
The Netherlands: Gouden Gids online (Dutch language)
Yellow pages directory, including web links where available. www.goudengids.nl
Spain: Paginas amarillas multimedia (Spanish language)
Yellow pages directory listing 1.6 million businesses and professionals. www.paginas-amarillas.es
Sweden: StorTele (Swedish language)
Yellow pages directory of Swedish companies. www.stortele.se
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UK: Companies House
Search company database by company name or registration number. www.companies-house.gov.uk
UK: Electronic Yellow Pages
An electronic version of BT’s Yellow Pages directory, listing contact details of over 1.6 million UK businesses.
search.yell.com
UK: Kelly’s
CD-Rom Directory of 152,000 companies in the UK and an online inter- national database of 2 million companies and 10 million products.
www.kellysearch.co.uk
UK: ThomWeb
Directory of 2 million UK firms, produced by Thomson Directories. www.thomweb.co.uk
UK: ICC Information
Information on British and Irish companies, directors and shareholders. www.icc.co.uk