Free Research: Part Deux

One of my first posts discussed Google Trends and the terrific data it provides - for free! More and more products are popping up online that provide truly outstanding research at no charge (for now) that can help you make better marketing decisions in your business. Check out:

• Alexa. While the methodology driving their data collection procedures might not hold up to perfect scrutiny, it is a fantastic starting point for viewing a site's rough statistics and how it is trending.
• Compete. Again, perfect? No, but more in-depth than Alexa. And, with stats like "average stay", what a great way to get some initial guidance and help compare one site to another.
• Quantcast. Wow, Paul Sutter and the folks at Quantcast have the tiger by the tail. By engineering this information in reverse, a whole suite of products, like Dart For Advertisers, comScore, and Nielsen, will be in catch-up mode for years.

Web 2.0 is a fun time. While I certainly would love for the sites above to remain free, my hope is that they'll be able to monetize themselves and charge appropriately for various audience sizes so this information continues to be available to dedicated marketers.