Data collection is a very tedious and tiring job, and it is also the basis for attracting investment. Good information collection ability helps us to quickly understand the basic situation of investors and lay a good foundation for the follow-up research and the acquisition of first-hand information.

First, the search engine (key)

Search engine is one of the most important channels for us to collect information. Using search engines to find information requires the use of appropriate keywords and some search skills. At present, the main collection engines in China are 10, and there are many industry searches in the near future. If you need to find professional industry information, you can use an industry-based search engine.

Because each search engine has certain limitations, you can try the keywords you want to search in multiple search engines, and you may find unexpected results.

Everyone is familiar with domestic engines, especially Baidu and Google. They need to search for information on the same topic, and different people may find different results. The main reasons are as follows:

1. Selection of search keywords

For example, we want to search for information about the development of big data industry. If we search for "big data" on Baidu, the results are too many to filter. We can further define keywords, such as "big data industry", "big data market scale", "China's big data industry", "big data technology" and "big data enterprises", and so on. We need to constantly change the search keywords until we find satisfactory search results.

2. Search skills

Mainly for some advanced search skills of Baidu, Google and other search engines. Commonly used skills mainly include the following aspects:

(1) filetype search: use filetype, for example, type "filetype:pdf Big Data" in Baidu or google to search for PDF content related to big data content. These documents can basically be downloaded directly. It can also be converted into others, such as "filetype:doc", "filetype:ppt" and "filetype:xls". Note that colons are English colons and must be converted into English colons.

(2) which website to locate for search: use site. Enter "big data space site:sina.com" in Baidu or Google, and you can enjoy platforms, industry research reports, statistical yearbooks and so on. It's free.