ResearchBuzz

Yes, it’s geeky, I agree 100% — and yet I’ve got to tell you that I enjoy browsing market research. And now I’ve got a whole wiki to do it in — MarketWikis is available at http://www.researchbuy.com/marketwikis/ .

The front page for this wiki has links to several different markets, though not a complete list (would that even be possible?) This wiki is not completely open, by the way — you do have to be registered to edit pages. Anyway, the markets listed here go from Abrasives Market to the Women’s Clothing Market.

I chose the Boat Dealers market at random and got an extensive page that provided information in several categories, including market structure, market metrics, industry players, and recent trends and developments.

Now, as I said you’re not going to find every possible market here. For what is here I find one good thing and about each article, one bad thing, and one thing I’m missing.

The good thing: these articles give me a great place to start. For example, I didn’t know who the main players were in boat sales. I can take the names I find here and go further with them, looking on other parts of the Web for additional dealer information. I would do that because of the bad thing: while there was a source list for every article that I looked at, facts were not cited directly — in other words there were no footnotes. Direct citations would help me a lot as a researcher. As it stands I would only trust this site as a starting point.

The thing I’m missing? A list of key words from each articles — companies, concepts, SOMETHING — that could quickly be turned into RSS feeds pointed at Google News or Yahoo News or some other fresh news source that offers RSS feeds. You could get an overview and start up setting up information traps at the same time.

This one’s been sitting in the queue for a while, and I’m sorry I haven’t covered it until now because I’m a stats geek. If you’re looking for marketing charts in Web/spreadsheet format, check out http://www.marketingcharts.com/ .

If you just want to get a sense of what’s available here, look at the thumbnails for Recent Data Updates across the top of the page. Click a thumbnail you find interesting, and you’ll get a good sized graphic chart showing data on ad spending, search share, top sites in a particular market, or whatever. A small caption underneath shows the data source (links to announcements/reports would be nice) and a small icon gives you a link to an downloadable Excel spreadsheet containing the data.

You can get details on other recent news/research in the marketing sector by looking at the nav on the right side of the screen. You can view information and news by marketing media (outdoors, print, radio, television, etc.) or by topic (the expanded list includes demographics, affiliate marketing, blogs, case studies, retail, research, etc.) There’s also a keyword search.

NOZA, a database for nonprofit fundraisers, announced today free access to its database of foundation grants. There are over 825,000 foundation grant records at its site and you can search ‘em at https://www.nozasearch.com/.

You can search by name or cause. Name is a simple search, but cause allows you to search by category, state, city, and donation amount. I decided to search for environmental foundations for Charleston South Carolina.

I got 201 results that I could sort in a variety of ways, including donation amount, city, state, and zip. Each listing provides a minimum amount of information. Chose the ones on which you want more information via the checkboxes and click the View Full Records link. You’ll get more extensive listings including donor name and recipient location and category. You can review the listings on the site or export them to a spreadsheet.

Not as fun or extensive as NOZA’s paid services, of course, but lots of material here and the added bonus of not even having to register to search/get results.