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Competitive

intelligence and theweb

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definition

the process of ethically collecting,analyzing and disseminatingaccurate, relevant, specific, timely,foresighted and actionableintelligence regarding theimplications of the business

environment, competitors and theorganization itself

[SCIP, 2003]

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An effective CI project is acontinuous cycle, who are includingthose steps:

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The reasons for the increase of usinginternet information in the CI processinclude:

1. A business Web site will contain a variety ofinformation.

2. The cost of this information is, for the mostpart, free.

3. Access to open sources does not requireproprietary software such as access to

multiple commercial databases.

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Web search

A Web search engine usually consists ofthe following components.

1. Web Crawlers or Spiders are used tocollect Web pages using graph searchtechniques.

2. An indexing method is used to indexcollected Web pages and store theindices into a database.

3. Retrieval and ranking methods are usedto retrieve search results from thedatabase and present ranked results tousers.

4. A user interface allows users to query

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The most common method for gatheringinformation from the Web is the use ofsearch engines

Examples are:

AltaVista [http://www.altavista.com currentSeptember 1, 2003,

Infoseek [http://www.infoseek.com currentSeptember 1, 2003],

Yahoo! [http://www.yahoo.com currentSeptember 1, 2003] andGoogle [http://www.google.com current

September 1, 2003].

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the meta-search engine

When a meta-search engine receives aquery it connects to several popularsearch engines and integrates theresults returned by those search

engines. Meta-search engines do not keep their

own indexes but in effect use the indicescreated by the search engines being

searched to respond to the query. In this type of search, if a computer

receives a request if it cannot fulfill, therequest is passed on to its neighboring

computer.

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INFORMATION ANALYSIS

It becomes necessary to control thesearch.

Control can be achieved by controlling

the graph search techniques. Controlling the search is, in effect, a

rudimentary analysis of the informationbeing retrieved.

The search should return only thoseWeb pages that are relevant to thequery.

This initial form of analysis is referred to

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Web mining

Web Content Mining Web Content Mining refines the basic search technique. Web Structure Mining Web Structure Mining uses the logical network model of

the Web to determine the importance a Web page. Web Usage Mining Web Usage Mining performs data mining on Web logs.

A Web log contains clickstream data. This data canbe analyzed to provide information about the use of theweb server or the behavior of the client depending

upon what clickstream is being analyzed Inaccuracies are a significant problem when the Web is

used as an information source for a CI project. Theissue is information verification.

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Information verification

In assessing the accuracy of theinformation it is useful to ask thefollowing questions:

Who is the author?

Who maintains (publishes) the Website?

How current is the Web page?

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Informations security

Information security is a concern. Theseconcerns include:

1. assuring the privacy and integrity ofprivate information

2. assuring the accuracy of its publicinformation

3. avoiding unintentionally revealinginformation that ought to be private.

The first of the concerns can be managedthrough the usual computer and networksecurity methods.

The second concern requires some use ofInternet security methods.(Web Defacing,

Web Page Hijacking, Cognitive Hacking...)

t t t

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so ut ons to t elimitations of the use of

the web in CI process Development of methods that improvethe efficiency and accuracy of textmining for information analysis.

Automating the process of informationverification of Web sources in generaland surface Web sources in particular.

Develop methods for improving securityincluding the automatic detection offalse information, inaccurateinformation, and negative information.

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Conclusion