Google Tools for Competitive and Marketing Intelligence (March)

8/2/2019 Google Tools for Competitive and Marketing Intelligence (March)

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March, 2012

Google Toolsfor Competitive Intelligence

Insights from a Survey

by:

UpdatedVersion

March2012


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March 2012 Miniera SL www.miniera.es Page 2

Introduction and Objectives

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

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

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

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

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

Are Information users aware of all theses tools and sources?

How are these tools utilized by Information users?

Which are the most useful with respect to Information Users?

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

this topic.

() see for instance: http://www.google.com/intl/en/options/ () We consider information user those practitioners and other professionals that utilizes

information for their job and make better decisions. They can be end user or information providers as for instance consultants or competitive intelligencepractitioners.


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Executive Summary

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

free Google tools were used by information users.

The survey (an on-line questionnaire) obtained 466 answers from a variety of companiesworld-wide.

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

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

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

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

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

used at the time.

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


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Demographic Information: Country/Region

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

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

more details of the regions.


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Demographic Information: Sector/IndustryThe sample represented many industries, although consulting was the most dominant

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

graph shows the top 10 industries.


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Demographic Information: Position/Job

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

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

Researcher and Analyst, Marketing Coordinator, CEO,

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

Information specialists, which includes Librarians and Analysts.

Decision Makers, which includes Directors, Managers and CEOs.

Consultants, which includes consultants, Teachers and professors.


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Demographic Information: Years of Experience

Although there are some young professionals in Competitive Intelligence (26,2% that have2 or

less years of experience) compared to those that have more than 10, the sample is composed of

a wide range of experience in term of years dedicated to Information. The following graph

shows greater detail.


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How Google Tools are utilized? (1/2)

The frequency of usage of

Google Tools vary quite

significantly betweeninformation users. The

most common tool is

Google Search engine,

which most professionalsuse. By contrast, Google

Moderatoris the least

used. The following graph

shows the overall ranking

of the different tools.

RatingAverage


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How Google Tools are utilized? (2/2)

The following graphs

offer an alternative view

of the previous result. Itshows that there is an

important number of

tools that are unknown

to information users

such as, Google

Squaredand Public

data explorer.

Moreover, some tools

are mostly never usedand are even unknown,

such as Gtalk and

Google Moderator


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Which is the most important Google Tool for CI?

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

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

at least 3 times more important than any other tool.

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

Explorer, Real Time, andModerator.The next graph shows the relative positioning of the tools with respect to Google

Search tool compared with the degree of frequency used.


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Top 5+5 Google Tools

Frequency

RelativeImpo

rtance

1.0

0.8

0.3

0.2

0.0

Always

Google Search1.00

1st ranked

73,2% of 350information users

considerGoogle

Search their 1st

option

Very OftenSometimesRarelyNever

0.4Google Alerts (0.36)

Google News (0.31)

Google Reader (0.25)

Google Readerhas

been almost 3/4

less important to

Google Search

Google Maps (0.22)

Google News has

been ranked as 2/3

less important to

Google Search

Google Alerts has

been ranked almost

as 2/3 less important

to Google Search

Google Maps has

been ranked almost

as 4/5 less important

to Google Search

Gmail (0.20)

Google Scolars (0.14)Google Docs (0.12)

You Tube (0.17)Google Translation (0.18)


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Limitation and Further Studies

Some points for thought:

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

these tools more efficient?

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

Competitive Intelligence software in their firm.

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

using Google Tools.

Further studies can help understand these open questions.


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If you need more information, please contact:

Alessandro Comai

info [;-)] miniera.es

Miniera SL

Centre d'Empreses - Parc Tecnolgic del Valls08290 Cerdanyola del Valls (Barcelona), Spain

Phone: +34.93.5820134

http://www.miniera.es

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Google Tools for Competitive and Marketing Intelligence (March)