Eric Friedman – Marketing.fm

At any given time I am usually trying to find out more information about a website or company and I thought I would share 10 ways I search for information and tools I use on the web.

Photo by booleansplit

1. DataOPedia – Basis stats, PR, Screen capture, traffic from Alexa, quantcast, and compete. Also has great popularity links from a variety of services.
Facebook Example Looking forward to them getting the email service working…

2. QuarkBase Similar data as above but with “similar” sites listed. It also shows popular pages within that domain over the past week, top feeds, breakdown by country, and the typical traffic stats. Listings of people at the company are also helpful.
Facebook Example

3. Portfolio.com Company Lookup This is great for finding out information for publicly traded companies. Specifically things like financial data and a calculated EBITDA.
Google Example

4. TradeVibes Latest info about companies and competitors. Has a marketplace for ratings and predictions on success. Example: DIGG

5. SimpleSpark Information profiles on startups but with a way to organize them into your own account. Also very easy to browse and search by category if you are not sure what you are looking for. Example: Green Living

6. CrunchBase As maintained by the public and TechCrunch this is a great resource to find out about recent fundings, fundings to date, and use the data in their awesome API that is publicly available.
Example: YouTube

7. Compete – Pretty standard web analytics and much better than Alexa.
Example: Marketing.fm vs. Marketing.com (who says you need a .com!)

8. Alexa: Honestly, I rarely use Alexa anymore because so many people argue the data. Every now and again somebody will throw up some Alexa numbers and I wonder why they do not use different data or internal numbers – but its on the list nonetheless.

9.QuantCast: My secret favorite of the list because their analytics are usually pretty good. I have been lucky enough to see behind the curtain at some sites and its nice to see data sync. up. Of course, sometimes it is way off which makes me think twice about ever fully trusting the data in the first place…
Example: CNN (not all sites available though: See Last.fm)

10. Pingdom – Paid service ahead! There is a free version but the paid service is worth it. I use it to check the uptime and availability of sites via a variable string check. This is a great way to see real load times from multiple locations, daily, weekly, and monthly uptimes, and overall information on a site. No live examples here but they do have a great API.