Web data can be used in all the decisions you make in your business. For example, retailers can use web data to set competitive rates. Financial advisers can provide the best investment advice to their clients by extracting daily stock market trends and investment directions.
The great thing about the following free resources is that they are all removable, so you can regularly extract web data in bulk and apply it to your business decisions.
1. Crunchbase
If you've ever researched a competitor's funding or earnings
stats, you've probably come to Crunchbase
and found what you need with a quick click. Although there is a premium
component that opens up more options and search capabilities on the site, its
freemium version provides a lot of valuable data for companies looking for more
information.
2. AngelList
Whether you're looking to join forces with a startup for a
new job, find new angel investment opportunities, or raise more funding, you
can find it on AngelList. The trick is to
navigate through a massive number of business pages and profiles to gather the
information they need.
3. Data.gov
Data.gov offers more
than 150,000 data sets. This is only a small fraction of the data resources
available through the federal, state, and local governments. There are dozens,
if not hundreds, of reasons why small businesses may want to take advantage of
these rich resources. For example, a consumer complaint database can help you find
the most important complaints about a product that you want to improve,
develop, or sell.
4. Financing from Google
Financial analysts desperately want financial information,
but collecting it is not always a straightforward process. Instead of setting
up dozens of Google alerts or compiling Yahoo Finance spreadsheets, you can
track investments and headlines by pulling data from Google Finance.
You can also obtain information about what is happening in
the stock market and gather information on business titles and projects to find
out what constitutes financial decisions. After all, finding out what the big
players in your industry are doing can give you a competitive advantage that
will help you keep up with progress and expand faster.
5. Social Mention
It is almost impossible to run a business these days without
staying on top of social media
to see what your competitors and customers are saying and doing. Social Mention can help you listen to
those conversations so you can stay on top of the latest trends and what's happening
in the market.
6. Glassdoor
The rapidly-growing job and recruiting site offers a
database featuring millions of company reviews and CEO approval ratings. This
type of information gives you invaluable insight into why people like – or
don’t like – working for particular companies.
7. Lending Club
Jumping into peer lending is as easy as signing up with a service like Lending Club, but you can gather far more information about trends, best options for return on investment, and the best business loans by extracting the data.
Use some of your other web data, like how much funding your
competitors acquired or what’s going on in the stock market, in conjunction
with your peer lending data extraction. This combined powerhouse of information
can help you make much better decisions about your capital and investments.
8. Consumer Price Index
Have you ever tried to compete with a major grocery store
chain? They’re likely ahead of the game because they extract items in the
Consumer Price Index food basket to compare and figure out how to price as
competitively as possible.
9. Yelp
Nailing down a buyer persona is often just guesswork or
based on a company’s own customer data. But if you’re a new business or have a
hunch you could be doing better, you can extract data from Yelp to put together
an exact buyer persona.
Once you filter through the data you need, like demographics
and keywords, you can see exactly where your ideal customers are buying, what
they’re saying, and what they want from your competitors. And once you’ve got
that information, you’ve got a goldmine of qualified leads at your fingertips.
10. Amazon
Getting real-time competitive pricing structures is
difficult without an automated way to do it. Web extraction through retail
sites like Amazon keeps businesses on top of market trends so they can price
accordingly and offer their customers the most up-to-date information
available.
With so much free data out there, the problem isn’t finding
a site to extract from. It’s how to narrow your scope and focus only on the
most useful information available. Start with the most pressing daily need of
your business,
whether that’s real-time pricing or sourcing top talent, and add more data sets
to your daily extraction as needed.
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