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 of professionals.  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.

1. Google Tools
for Competitive Intelligence
Insights from a Survey
Ver sion
ted 2012
pda ch
U
by: Mar
March, 2012

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 of
professionals.
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 intelligence
practitioners.
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3. 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 companies
world-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.
March 2012 © Miniera SL – www.miniera.es Page 3

4. 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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5. Demographic Information: Sector/Industry
The sample represented many industries, although consulting was the most dominant
(17,4 %) and shows almost to be double that of other sectors/industries. The following
graph shows the top 10 industries.
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6. 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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7. 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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8. How Google Tools are utilized? (1/2)
The frequency of usage of
Google Tools vary quite
significantly between
information users. The
most common tool is
Google Search engine,
which most professionals
use. By contrast, Google
Moderator is the least
used. The following graph
shows the overall ranking
of the different tools.
Rating Average
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9. How Google Tools are utilized? (2/2)
The following graphs
offer an alternative view
of the previous result. It
shows that there is an
important number of
tools that are unknown
to information users
such as, Google
Squared and Public
data explorer.
Moreover, some tools
are mostly never used
and are even unknown,
such as Gtalk and
Google Moderator
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10. Which is the most important Google Tool for CI?
Google Search, Alert, News, Reader and 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, and Moderator.
The next graph shows the relative positioning of the tools with respect to Google
Search tool compared with the degree of frequency used.
March 2012 © Miniera SL – www.miniera.es Page 10

11. 1st ranked –
Top 5+5 Google Tools 73,2% of 350
information users
consider Google
Search their 1st
1.0 option Google Search
1.00
0.8
Google Alerts has
been ranked almost
Relative Importance
Google News has as 2/3 less important
been ranked as 2/3
0.3 to Google Search
less important to
Google Search
Google Reader has Google Maps has
been almost 3/4 Google Alerts (0.36) been ranked almost
0.4 less important to as 4/5 less important
Google Search Google News (0.31) to Google Search
Google Reader (0.25)
0.2
Google Maps (0.22)
Gmail (0.20)
Google Translation (0.18)
You Tube (0.17)
Google Scolars (0.14)
Google Docs (0.12)
0.0
Never Rarely Sometimes Very Often Always
Frequency
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12. Conclusions
The survey shows that there are some common tools that information users utilize to
gather on-line information. However, there are several tools that are rarely used or
unknown and could add significant value. We therefore conclude that information
users:
Utilize Google tools for ad-hoc projects/researches not only for
searching, but also for gathering intelligence systematically (Alert, News,
or Rss )
Do not make a periodic revision of the new tools that Google make
available.
March 2012 © Miniera SL – www.miniera.es Page 12

13. Limitation and Further Studies
Some points for thought:
1. The survey does not show how these tools are used during the day or week. Our
question: 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.
March 2012 © Miniera SL – www.miniera.es Page 13

14. Contacts
If you need more information, please contact:
Alessandro Comai
info [;-)] miniera.es
Miniera SL
Centre d'Empreses - Parc Tecnològic del Vallès
08290 Cerdanyola del Vallès (Barcelona), Spain
Phone: +34.93.5820134
http://www.miniera.es
March 2012 © Miniera SL – www.miniera.es Page 14