Yahoo News as an online research tool

Yahoo News has similar features to Google News and it’s probably just a matter of preference on which you’d want to use. Yahoo allows you to search top stories by category, search by keywords, see the most viewed stories, most recommended stories and displays trending topics. But one thing we’ve noticed is that Yahoo seems to have more flexible RSS options than Google.

Go to http://news.yahoo.com and the categories can be found near the top of each page:

…and you can search for videos, photos and blogs too. If you want to search by keyword, the search box for the News is part way down the left side. The search box at the top right is a web search…rather than a news search.

You’ll find the RSS subscription options at the bottom left of each category page:

Or you can go straight to the RSS – Yahoo News page at http://news.yahoo.com/rss to select the feeds you want.

Greg Cryns
Work At Home Profiles
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Twitter Search and Trending Topics as an online research tool

Twitter Search and Trending Topics

Twitter is a large social networking site where users share “what’s happening”. Find out the most popular topics being discussed on Twitter. You can also search for discussions on specific topics.

Go to http://search.twitter.com and use the search box to find discussions on certain topics and see the most popular topics:

Click through any of the “Trending Topics” to see the recent tweets in real time:

In the top right corner, you can also subscribe to the RSS feed for any of the queries you choose (even ones that are not trending):

Greg Cryns

Work At Home Profiles

.

Technorati as an online research tool

Technorati serves as a directory of blogs, but also organizes topics through tagging and ranks blogs, according to its own algorithm. It is useful for searching for blogs by category and for finding blog posts on certain topics.

You can browse by category at the top of the page. Just put your over the main category to see the subcategories.

When you click on a category, you can see who the top movers (ie. blogs gaining in popularity) are:

And you can search for topics or blogs, by clicking the appropriate button (“blogs” or “posts”) the search bar:

You can also look at popular tags by clicking “Tags” on the top menu. That will bring you to a page with a huge listing of popular tags over the previous month:

Greg Cryns

Work At Home Profiles

.

Reddit as an online research tool

Reddit is a social bookmarking site that allows you to what users are bookmarking and content gets ranked by what users consider to be “good” and what they consider to be “junk”. Although it may not give you a true picture of popular trends like a keyword tool could give you, it is a very popular website and can give you indication of the types of content users are interested in.

You can browse by category. At first, the categories might be hard to see, but they’re crammed at the top of the page:

You can browse by “what’s hot”, “new”, “controversial”, and “top.”

You can also use the search box in the top right corner:

You can then sort your results by relevance, how new the content is and how popular:

Greg Cryns

Work At Home Profiles

.

Magazines.com as an online research tool

Magazines.com is a huge website where you can browse and purchase a variety of magazine, journal, book and newspaper subscriptions. This site can be a handy tool for researching niche markets with the theory being if there are magazines or other publications in a particular topic and advertisers paying to be in those publications, there is money to be made.


For example, let's say I am working in a health and fitness niche. I can go to  Magazines.com and browse the magazines available. 


Prevention Magazine caught my eye.

Here are just a few article titles for one issue: 1. More energy and less stress!,  2. Doctor approved natural cures, 3. Turning her back on Botox for good,  4. Vitamin Shocker - what works and what doesn't.


If I was looking for blog topics, these headlines alone from just one magazine would be enough to fuel some research on a single topic. See how that works?

In addition to finding topic ideas, you might also explore the publications so you can submit your own articles, press releases or seek out advertising opportunities. In short, Magazines.com can be a very helpful resource for an online business.

The top categories are listed on the left side of the page, but if you navigate to http://www.magazines.com/browse/ you can access all the categories and use a more powerful search.

You can browse by publication type and category. Below we’ve chosen hobby magazines:

Or you can scroll down further to view all the categories and their subcategories:

Once you click through, listings are automatically sorted by “Bestselling”, but you can sort alphabetically, by price, and more.

Greg Cryns
Work At Home Profiles

Google Trends as an online research tool

Google Trends allows you to see some of the most popular keyword searches and see their popularity over time. It also allows you to compare the popularity of keywords as well.

You can get started at http://google.com/trends. On the main page, you’ll “hot topics”:

And then more specifically, you can see the “Hot Searches”:

At the top of the page, you can enter your own keywords and compare them if you wish. Just separate each keyword by a comma:

By default, Google Trends shows you the data over the past few years:

As we can see in the above example, Santa Claus is the most popular with a spike at the end of the year. The Easter Bunny is next most popular with a smaller spike in the springtime. The Tooth Fairy is searched the less with only a few very small spikes in traffic in 2010.

In the top right corner, you can change the time period shown in the data. Your options include:

You can also view popularity of phrases by region or specify your search to a particular region.

Greg Cryns

Work At Home Profiles

.

Google Suggest as an onilne research tool

Google Suggest

While it is now integrated into regular Google search, “Google Suggest” is a tool that suggest popular keyword phrases based on what you are entering into a search engine.

Just go to http://google.com and start entering keywords. In our example, we enter “Amazon Kindle” and see what comes up:

You can keep entering words and more suggested searches will come up, if they are available. This is a very handy tool for quickly looking for potential keywords and even content ideas.

Using another example, you’ll also notice that as you search, the search results for the first suggested keyword phrase appears below until you make your choice. You can also scroll down the suggestions and quickly preview the search results. This might be helpful in locating an article to use as a reference or for further ideas.

Greg Cryns

Google News as an online research tool

Google News shows the top new stories from around the world. You can browse and search for certain locations, publications and more. It’s a good resource for finding current events and issues around which you can shape content. You can sign up for alerts via email, RSS and even on your mobile phone.

Go to http://news.google.com to get started. On the left side of the page, you can browse by category. You can choose a particular country from the drop-down box if you’d like.

“Starred” means stories that you have starred or bookmarked for later reference.

You can subscribe to the RSS feed of any category page. Just scroll to the very bottom of the page to find the RSS link:

You can also search by keywords using the search box:

And if you choose “Advanced news search”, you can search by specific keyword combinations, location, publication, author and more:

Greg Cryns

Google Keyword Tool as an online research tool

The Google Keyword Tool allows you to see popularity of keyword searches and will even suggest possible keywords for your own web pages. It’s useful in generating content ideas because you can focus on keyword searches that have decent volume and not too competition. But do note, the competitive analysis this tool offers is for their pay-per-click advertisers, not for organic (free) search rankings.

You can start by going to https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal and entering keyword phrases or your web page in the search boxes:

If you click the “Advanced options” you can get more specific with your search like locations, languages, mobile search and other specifics.

Once you click “search”, you’ll get results that look like this. You can sort any of the columns. And if you click “views” on the far right, you can customize which columns appear.

You can also search by category on the left side. Just choose a category or subcategory and the keywords will appear on the right.

Greg Cryns

Work At Home Profiles

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Google Insights for Search for online research

Google Insights for Search allows you to compare search volume patterns across regions, categories, time and more. Go to http://www.google.com/insights/search/# to get started.

The following screen shows how you can narrow down your data:

Here’s an example of a Location Search. We’ve chosen the UK and England as our location. We’ve chosen “Web Search” (as opposed images, news or products) and “iphone 4” as the keyword tool. We’ve also chosen searches in the last 12 months and kept the default of “All Categories”.

The results include a graph mapping the interest over the chosen time period. It also shows the most popular categories.

The tool also breaks down the interest into smaller regions. You can view that information in text:

Or on a map:

It also shows you the popular search terms:

And finally, it shows you searches that are on the rise:

You can choose to embed either of the 2 search term tables to your website. Just click the “Embed This Table” and follow the instructions:

Greg Cryns

Work At Home Profiles

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Google Blog Search - online research tool

Google Blog Search uses Google’s search technology to index and display content from blogs around in the world, in a variety of languages. It’s useful for finding popular stories in given categories and an on certain topics. You can also find out what the popular blog searches are.

Go to http://blogsearch.google.com to get started. You can search topics by keyword phrase:

By clicking “Advanced Blog Search”, you can refine your search by specifying exactly how close the search must match your keyword phrase, date published, language and more.

You can also review blog posts by category. The categories are listed on the left side of the page:

Right below the categories list on the left side, you’ll see an RSS option. You can subscribe to the RSS feed of each category’s top stories. Just go to the category page and click the “RSS” link:

When you are on a category page, on the right side of the page, you’ll find “hot queries” showing what topics people are searching for:

The above is useful for finding out what those using Google Blog Search are looking for.

Greg Cryns

Work At Home Profiles

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