1 - Geography/Moving/Where to Live
2 - Identifying Careers
3 - Salaries
4 - Industry Research
5 - Company Research
6 - Company Research & Contact Info
7 - Beyond Contact Information

8 - More Specific Company Research
9 - Self-Employed and Home Business
10 - Part-Time, Contract, & Temporary Work
11 - Non-Profits and Social Conscience
12 - Work for Minorities
13 - Work for Women
14 - Work for the Disabled

This is an introductory article, written to describe what people in business can learn about rivals by skimming the Net - but for job-hunters, the most helpful parts are those that tell you how to find out more about companies that interest you.

Need to know more about a city or town? Interested in a business located in that city? Start at the Chamber of Commerce. Here is a good list of city/town chambers of commerce, with links to their Web sites and email addresses.

If you know the URL for the company web site, then go to this site or the one listed before it (each works better in certain situations), and punch it into their search engine. It looks through the database of domain registrations and returns basic data about the company, usually including an "administrative contact". If it's a large company, the administrative contact may be the same as the technical contact, which may be just an IT manager or a trusted programmer in the IT department; but for smaller companies, you may have just gotten the name and contact info for the head guy, or close to it.

This bible of manufacturers is also a great place to do company research. When you want to know what companies are working in what fields, there is no other resource like the Thomas Register. The Web site allows you to find basic company data, such as contact information, number of employees, parent company, and so forth. But the Internet version of the Thomas Register doesn't have anywhere near the data in the actual published version. When you are researching a company, you really should go down to the library and look at any data about them in the real Register. Just so you'll recognize it, it's made out of, like, paper?

What the Thomas Register does for the U.S., the Global Register does for the world — but even the Global Register's database is pretty U.S.-centric, so if you don't find what you want at the (non-Global) Thomas Register site, come here. You may search by product or company name, or browse the many industries and products listed by category. You have to register to use the site, but all the basic stuff is free.

This site gathers together publications from the business press from all over the country. You can search the archive for any mention of the company (or industry or person) that you are interested in; they've got a lot here. You must register, but access is free. There are other "goodies" on this site as well.

You will be amazed at how much industry and company information you can get from the newspaper - and very little of it will be available through the normal search engines. To access this data, you need to go the Web sites of the newspapers themselves; the newspapers that service a company's local area are particularly valuable. Refdesk - an amazing site - has a page here that links to newspapers in every state and around the world. There is tons of information in Refdesk's archive, and even more at the Web sites of the newspapers themselves. Also, take a look at the Quick Reference resources at www.refdesk.com/instant.html .

All public companies, domestic and foreign, who do business in the U.S. are required to file all kinds of forms and papers with the SEC. All such filings, and more, end up in the EDGAR database (which stands for Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval). EDGAR is huge; and it can take a little while to get the hang of using it effectively, but what a tremendous resource.

A directory of companies, organized by industry. Not the most complete listing available, but for the companies that are listed, you'll find profiles with sales data, number of employees, office locations, company and industry overviews, and so on.

Tons of links to resources for researching companies in various industries. When you are stuck, and need an idea of how to mine company info, browse through this list.

A great page from the University of British Columbia, useful for researching Canadian companies; with links to many resources.

A basic listing of companies in Europe - 500,000 of them, in 33 countries. Not much depth to the actual company data, but the ability to browse by industry, or search for companies with this many employees, in these countries, working in this field, is very handy.

Maybe you've heard of these guys? The Web site is as good as the newspaper, with many links to resources for company research. You need to subscribe to really get the full benefit of the site; I don't recommend too many Web sites that charge for their services, but if I was job hunting in the corporate world, this is one I would strongly consider. The cost is $79 per year, or $39 if you already subscribe to the paper. As I write, there is a free two week trial, no obligation, as well. Note that if you subscribe to the online WSJ, your searches at Factiva (see below) are free, though there is still a documents charge for search results.