Workflow Internet Research, Part 1

This is the first of three posts on the topic “Workflow Internet Research” .

The internet as a seemingly endless research source offers a copious amount of information.

Not much preparation is needed for a quick search, for example, about a current news topic.

However, things are a bit different for more complex tasks. My internet research does not start with the keyboard, but rather with a pen and paper.

In the following, I will introduce you to our current workflow for internet research. We use it daily and constantly optimize it.

Of course, it is also a component of our training offers on the topic of internet investigation.
Here are the individual components:

Workflow Internet Research: Preparation

Effective research begins by answering the following questions:

How much time do I have for the task?
How big is the budget for additional fee-based inquiries?
What information do I want to find?
Why was the assignment issued?
Where could you find this information?
How should you perform the research?
Can the assignment be handled alone or divided among a team?
How high is the level of anonymity during the research?
Are the expenses justified compared to the costs?

Identify the Questions That You Need Answers To

Are there exact questions from the customer?The more precise your customer’s requirements are, the easier it will be to fulfill the assignment!If there are multiple questions, group them into categories.Now prioritize the questions in the order in which they should be answered.Important questions in this connection:

Who is the product for that you want to create?
Why does the customer want to know it and how do they want to use the desired information?
Why does the customer want to know it and how do they want to use the desired information?
How much time does the customer have to “process/read” your product?
What would be the best format?

Workflow Internet Research: Assignment Definition

Use the questions developed above to form the assignment for your research. Also, develop an eye for the “most optimal solution” for the assignment and formulate the “Successful Outcome”:

What would the best solution look like if you had all the possibilities, options and time?

This solution is now the objective of your assignment.

I always write a short summary of these objectives in my digital notes. Then I never lose focus on them during research.

Workflow Internet Research: Collect Existing Information

This step is really important! Only once you really see what information you have regarding the topic can you also recognize what you are missing.

Summarize all search information that you have at this point in time for this assignment. Ideally, copy this information into a text editor before you begin with your research.

Divide this information according to entities. Thus, for example, everything about a person, all the information about an address, etc.

We always use Notepad++ or Typora (markdown editor) for such tasks.
Then you have this data available at all times to create specific Google queries and for further searching.

You should also take note of the important missing information in this file.

Issue External Assignments

Sometimes external assignments must be issued for important missing information such as address verification or to verify, for example, people. These assignments should be issued directly at the beginning of the research so the results can be included in the further investigations.

One of our important tools to support us in our internet research is Hunchly. This finds, for example, the “hidden” keywords in the source text from the site, highlights hits on each site and automatically saves all visited sites. That is why Hunchly is set up at this point in our workflow and the corresponding selectors are saved.

Note: Another blog post about Hunchly is to follow where I will discuss more details.

So much for today on this topic, below you will find the total flowchart for this process as a graphic. In the next post, it goes on with “complementary keywords” and the “search plan”.

Flowchart

The flowchart on the left shows all stations for our iResearch “cycle” (workflow internet research).

In discussed the first three points in this post, the next two post will discuss the further steps in this research process.

Tip: Click the image to see a larger graphic or you can download a PDF A4 version here.

If you have any of additional new tips or questions related to the “workflow internet research” sources, please ask that you conact us.
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