Online Web Research Services & Data Research, Data mining

Internet research is the practice of using the internet for searching for information to acquire facts, data or statistical information on a particular subject. Within the field of market research, internet research is a commonly used for secondary research because internet can provide practically instant, vast and diverse amount of information on most topics. There are many websites with libraries of research database findings and even some profit oriented websites also have research database published freely, although there are many who offer information online for a price. But here it is important to stress the fact that internet has been instrumental in making the transition in the market research and has a profound impact on the way the ideas are formed and knowledge is created.

In today's world Internet has become an obvious choice for doing research, but Internet too has its unique characteristics that create both benefits and drawbacks.

On the positive side, the Internet offers the following:

* Access to new and valuable sources of information these include electronic journals and Internet discussion groups.
* Efficient and quick route for accessing certain standard information sources such as newspapers, particularly overseas papers and electronic versions of existing print journals.
* Access to an enormous amount of information, estimated 800 million pages of information on the web.
* Access to digital versions of primary sources. Some libraries are making electronic versions of primary research sources such as official government documents, treaties, and photographs.
* Access to searchable databases and datasets. There are many websites where one can find search a collection of statistical data, such as demographic or social science data.
* Access to government information Many federal governments are utilizing the Internet as its preferred method for disseminating information.

Besides these Internet brings other advantages like Speed and timeliness, a search on the Internet can take only seconds and information available can be up-to-date. Internet delivers notjust text, but graphics, audio, and video and Web pages can facilitate an associative type of research by providing Hyper linking.

On the downside the most significant are

Finding information on the Internet that is relevant, useful, current and credible can be challenging because Information on the Internet is

* Disorganized and decentralized - thousands of networks are involved and no central index or database exists
* Dynamic - changing every minute and expanding rapidly
* Not subject to pre-publication checks of the facts so not always authentic or accurate and difficulties persist in verifying a writer's credentials
* Web pages are very unstable. This can be of particular concern for academic researchers, who need to cite a stable page for reference purposes.
* Information on the Internet in doesn't necessarily represent a comprehensive search result of the world's literature or knowledge since majority of the world's knowledge still resides in print.

Searching tools and techniques are:

* Numerous and varied
* Not standardized
* Constantly changing
* Internet research is centered on search tool bias and to draw meaningful results searcher needs to have sufficient skill.
* Keyword popularity is important factor used in structuring internet search results, but the most popular information is not always the most correct.

There arebuilt-in technical limitations of Internet search engines and the way Web pages are created, search result is a small percentage of information available on internet and it can be difficult to distinguish the valuable information from the trivial pages which leads unpredictable results.
Author:pawan
Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/