You might also want to establish whether--and how far--you will venture off on tangents. Often Web searches produce unexpected and useful, if slightly off-target, material.
Shenk advocates defining your searches as specifically as possible--the more search terms you include, the narrower the result. If you're looking for Honest Bob's Ford Escort and Bronco Dealership, and you don't want the Bronco Escort Agency, you must be as specific as possible, using what is known as Boolean logic: you'd type "Escort NEAR Bronco AND Honest Bob's AND Ford NOT champagne," for example.
If you find yourself mumbling four-letter words of frustration, sometimes it's best to adopt a low-tech approach for a moment. Just consult an old favorite: the yellow pages (although now you can search the yellow pages of different regions simultaneously on the Web).
Some warn against spending much time browsing at all. "General browsing is not the way to find information," says Ronnie Franke, a senior project manager at Waid & Associates. He flips through publications at night, noting recommended Web sites. The next morning, at work, he quickly checks them out, "bookmarking" (or saving the Web addresses of) the good ones.
Industry newsletters and magazines publish lists of the most relevant Web sites in your trade. But you've got to be rigorous about staying on top of recommendations. Strategy: clip suggestions, toss them into a file, and then devote time each week to checking them out.
I've Got That Address Here Somewhere...
Let's say you visit the Web site for Absentminded Press and would like to visit it regularly but would prefer not to remember--or type in--the company's complicated address (www.icantrecall.com/~distraction/spaceysort). Instead, while the page is open, you can simply click on the site with your right mouse button, choose Add Bookmark from Netscape's drop-down menu (or, with Microsoft's Internet Explorer, select Add to Favorites) and voilà!--you've bookmarked the site. Bookmarks allow your browser to function like a file cabinet. You open the appropriate drawer (or folder) that you've named, say, "publishers," open the file labeled "small presses," and click on "Absentminded," and, in seconds, you're at the company's Web site.
Using the Web effectively means constantly compiling and organizing your bookmarks, discarding those you don't use much or that turn out to be disappointing. Norbert J. Kubilus, an information-technology specialist in Yardley, Pa., keeps a limited number of bookmarks, and once every quarter he goes through and deletes those he hasn't used.
A minute or two invested in careful "filing" when you first create the bookmark will pay hefty dividends. Active business Web surfers know how critical it is to name each bookmark correctly so it can be found quickly later on. The sites usually offer default titles, but you're better off renaming them with titles or descriptions that fit the way you think. Another trick is putting bookmarks for sites that serve numerous purposes under multiple headings. You might put the Washington Post's home page in your "news" folder, its business page in your "business news" folder, and its classifieds under "help wanted."
Flowers Among the Weeds
Caveat emptor--be wary of the source. Anybody, after all, can put up a Web page. So it's useful to find as many reliable sites as you can. One way is to locate the sites of trade associations and publications. Their links to other Web pages are likely to be of high quality, as they've already been screened for industry relevance.
John-Scott Dixon, director of electronic media at Insight, a direct marketer of computer software based in Tempe, Ariz., advises you to watch the URL (or Web address). If the address has org appended, it is an organization; com stands for a business; gov denotes a government site; and edu means the site is run by an educational institution. Other helpful suffixes, including firm and store, will soon be available. Material from personal home pages is less reliable, as are chat-room postings, which can pop up on random keyword searches.
Shenk's basic rule is that you get what you pay for. Generally, he figures that sites that charge fees are of higher quality than free ones. He likes the Electric Library, where, for $9.95 a month, you can perform keyword searches on full-text articles written by journalists and experts--a process that can cost hundreds of dollars on the better-known Lexis-Nexis. It's a bargain, he figures, and it's better than counting on the random hits of search engines, which can turn up credible-sounding material that has actually been posted by lunatics and scam artists.
Start Spreading the News
Being pushy may be frowned upon in some circles, but in the Internet world, it's the hottest new concept. So-called push technology may be the best new hope for saving time. Instead of your going onto the Web in search of information, it comes to you--automatically. A big hit at the moment, push technology gathers news stories and other material based on criteria you set and then forwards them to you. It's like a personal clipping service, albeit one that's a little less able to discern good from bad than an old-fashioned human being. But the point is that you don't have to do anything but read the material when it comes in. Push comes in two basic varieties: E-mail message and screen saver. Examples include My Yahoo (edit.my .yahoo.com/config/login), which sends you a daily news page customized to your interests, and PointCast, which, among other things, flashes news and stock quotes across your screen.
Although it has yet to reach its potential, push technology does offer you a steady stream of stories about companies or industries you need to track. Consider signing up for some of the free introductory offers of several services and then testing them for your own needs.
Please, Mr. Postman, No More E-Mail
One way to monitor your industry is to check into a newsgroup. Newsgroups are ongoing Internet discussions that you can follow or participate in. People post messages and replies, and you can follow the entire conversation thread. Another means of staying informed is to subscribe to a listserv, an automated mailing list through which all the posted dialogue gets forwarded to you as E-mail.
