Northwest Research

ETA-As of 7:30 this evening, it appears that Exact Phrase is fixed.

After more research it appears that it the Google Exact Phrase Search problem seems to be related to certain Google Databases. Here is a blog entry from Nico’s Blog (I don’t know who Nico is, but the blog is very interesting) that explains it far better than I can.

Google: Exact Phrase Search No Longer Works

So a quick fix would be to stop using the Google toolbar and use one of the functioning IP Addresses listed in the above blog entry.

According to several readers, Google is aware and working on this problem.

Another way to find out which Google IP addresses are working is to use the amazing Google Watch Tool

This site allows you to enter Google using multiple IP addresses. For example, I searched my mythical prospect “Katherine E. Morrison” in all the Google Databases with the prefix 64.233 and they all came out with around 48 hits. When I used this tool to search Google databases where the last two numbers were .99 I found that

http://216.239.53.99/
http://216.239.57.99/
http://66.102.7.99/

All came up with about 12,900 hits for my mythical donor, most of which did not contain the donor’s name.

It is a very interesting tool, but mostly it is very useful for finding a Google entry point that will provide accurate results.

This may be a better workaround than the anonymouse!

I just stumbled across a lovely set of links from Yahoo!

Financial Reference>Glossaries

I love how Yahoo aggregatessouces, and this is very useful when trying to figure out what those annual reports, proxies, 8-Ks and other business financial documents really mean.

I have always been especially fond of Moneywords, which disappeared a while back, but I have become very fond of the Investopedia

Investopedia (which doesn’t appear to be a Wiki, despite its name), has an excellent financial dictionary, as well as tutorials and a variety of research tools.

Enjoy!

A reader wrote me asking about Secretary of State databases.

I have been using Merlin Information Systems National Secretary of State Database, which can be found here

Merlin Information Systems

You do need an account with Merlin in advance, and they have a lot of databases that I don’t use, but I do like being able to search, by name, in all Secretary of State databases at once.

If you are looking to seach more economically, Chris Mildner shared this

The National Association of Secretary of States.

This site provides links to all fifty Secretary of State, and many have free searchable databases.

As I am sure most of you know, you can usually use these databases to confirm the existence of businesses and partnerships. In addition, some sites let you search by prospect name.

Enjoy!

It appears that at least 75 researchers are having the same problems with Google as I am, and there has also been a message on the Google problems board. Most people have had this problem about a week.

What is even more interesting is that two researchers sitting at separate computers in the same room will get wildly different search results.

I believe it may have something to do with this:

Google Blog–This is only a test

Andrew Kishner of ASK Consulting stated he was having the same problem, but was able to solve it by using an anonymizer. He uses Anonymouse, I tried it with Google Anon, and I found that my 12,900 hits for “Katherine E. Morrison” shrank to 41!

I do hope they fix it soon.

In the past 24 to 48 hours, I have been finding that Google is not
providing me with accurate searches for an Exact Phrase.

I can’t give you a real example, because it involves potential donor
names, but I have done a search on the name “Katherine E. Morrison”
which pulls up 12,900 hits. However, of the first 10 hits, the name
“Katherine E. Morrison” only appears in three of them. So, I
immediately think that the page has changed, so I check the cached
version, which tells me

These terms only appear in links pointing to this page: katherine e morrison

As far as I can tell, Google is currently not searching exact phrases.
I am not entirely clear on what it is searching (maybe all words?). I
have tried this from my google toolbar, from the google mainpage, from
the google advanced page and gotten nowhere.

I usually use Google for searches like

“Kathy and Sam Smith” Springfield MO donor

And the answers I am getting don’t make any sense.

Anyway, I am using Alltheweb.com for now, until this gets cleared up.
Is anyone else having this experience? Have I been assigned to Google
Heck or something? It is kind of like the google version of the TV
show Lost.