You can search online to find information about your industry, organization and its competitors:
- Think about "who" cares about this industry.
- In other words, who might collect data or have statistics and other information related to your organization or topic. Depending on the industry, there may be nonprofit organizations and government agencies (federal, state or local) that collect this type of data.
- Develop more effective keywords.
- Don't ask Google questions. Instead, think about how the words might be phrased on the website or the words that best describe what you're looking for.
- Limit your search by types of information sources.
- Conducing a Google "site" search (see examples site searches below) will limit your search to only one domain (.gov/.edu/.org). This type of search can help you locate industry-related statistics and reports from government agencies (.gov), university research centers (.edu) or organizations (.org).
Examples of Google "site" searches:
children arts site:.org - will retrieve .org websites with information related to children and the arts.
organ transplant statistics site:.org - will retrieve .org websites with statistics related to organ transplants.
volunteer statistics Louisiana site:.gov - will retrieve government websites with statistics related to volunteering in Louisiana.