Google Based Reconnaisance

Just a quick snippet this week, on a what I think is a clever use of a search engine for some competitive intelligence.

So a friend rings me up and says, “this company has a job going, and if I remember rightly you know the owner”. I say “I haven’t spoken to him in years, but I would be surprised if his business was big and successful, as he was strong technically, but weak at sales”.

So here’s the trick

1. I got to the companies website (or yellow pages listing to find their address)

2. I go to Google . (www.google.com.au)

3. I type in the address, enclosing it with quotation marks so I don’t get a million hits that are irrelevant.

4. Checking the results, I have a quick look if there is any other businesses at that address, and whether they share any of the same characteristics, such as telephone number or staff etc.

Sure enough, there are four other businesses that are sharing the same address and phone number. A reasonable guess is that the company is either very small and using serviced offices, or, there are a couple of interrelated business lumping in together. Nothing wrong with this, but its not what my friend is looking for so he won’t waste time applying.

10 seconds of Google based reconnaissance. Lovely.

It’s also interesting to do the same thing with published client lists of small businesses. I have noticed that plenty of small web developers and SEO businesses will publish a list of clients. A quick search then shows up that half of them share the same address. Marketing via the web is a two edged sword….

As a side note : when I enter “Level 5, 400 Collins” Google also returns results for other obvious variations on that address such as “Level 5/400 Collins” and “Level 5 : 400 Collins”. It’s also worthwhile noting that the address wasn’t actually Level 5, 400 Collins”. I changed it protect the innocent.

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