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Recommended: Research Sites
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Eavesdrop...In a Good Way
 

Looking to keep up with Jones Inc.? If so, there are a number of Web resources designed to help you find detailed business reports, access company profiles and gather market information. The most effective options offer comprehensive data and intelligence at a reasonable price. So where should you turn for competitive information? Find out by reading our review of the top competitive research sites. We’ll tell you the pros, cons and best use scenarios for each and let you know where you should go to get a leg up on the competition.

Option Best For Next Step

Competitious

A free, Web-based program that lets you clip articles or pages from anywhere on the Web and store and share them.
Anyone that wants a way to organize information about their competition in order to stay abreast with the other companies in their industry.

Hoovers

Do your research and gain a leg up on the competition or find new business leads. Hoovers grants you access to company profiles and business reports.
Businesses that need top-notch business information in order to stay a step ahead.

Manta.com

If you're looking to buy a company, you need to know what it's all about. Check out Manta.com, a research company that provides company information, research reports and more.
Organizations in need of a quick reference to keep tabs on the competition.
Features Price

Competitious
  • Web based platform; no software to download.
  • Web page and online article clipping system.
  • Comparison matrixes.
  • Secure news feeds.
  • Web traffic graphs.
  • Centralized collaboration platform.
 
Free.

Hoovers
  • Information on a company’s earnings and other financial information.
  • Information on employee growth.
  • Newsletters.
  • Whitepapers.
  • Podcasts
  • Articles.
 
Free for some services, membership and single report prices vary.

Manta.com
  • “Ask the Expert” feature, where you can submit questions to a designated expert.
  • Small business news.
  • Create a customized dashboard that lets you save notes, track certain companies and more.
 
Free.
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  1.  

    Researching the market - Joel Feinstein - 4/15/2009

    I found all three of these companies to be useful. I was able to see what my competitors were up to and use a fresh approach with my advertising.

     
  1.  

    Competitious - christy taylor - 5/12/2009

    I never heard of "competitious" so I decided to check it out. After looking at it, seems like a pretty awesome software and it's completely free! It's different from the other two in the sense that it doesn't really provide you with your competitors' info. It's more of a tool to where you can keep track of all your competitors' info into one location to form a database to help you quickly compare all the companies you have listed. It allows to keep track of all the info you found, new feeds/articles, any projects you have, traffic and pretty much anything else. Definitely will make things come in handy.

     
  1.  

    Finding information on competitors - Jason B. - 5/21/2009

    When it comes to researching companies, one of the very first sources that constantly pops up to mind is Hoover's. Manta and Competitious are things that I never heard of before. In Hoover's, you can access some of details of different companies for free, but it's very limited. If you want a fuller report, you have to pay for it. But the information that they provide is very detailed and many of which you can't really find anywhere else unless you actually worked at the company. I found Manta to be kind of similar to Hoover's but the limited report wasn't as detailed. And even the ones you had to purchase, they were from the same company as Hoover's.

     
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