Happy Friday everyone! Those who follow bizologie know that we are major advocates for association pages, and we occasionally have Professional Associations Spotlight segments like this one. So what happened when I came upon an association of…wait for it….associations? Research magic, in the form of a database called the Gateway to Associations, a great free directory courtesy of the American Society of Association Executives (ASAE), was what happened.
Sure it’s easy to Google for associations; I do it all the time. But I, like the rest of you, am lazy and rarely go past the second page of results unless I’m digging for info on an erudite topic. Hence I was delighted when I tested the Gateway database, by doing a search for Association names containing: solar. I received 18 links to titles including solar associations, corporations, and societies, and they all included the city where they are based.
In comparison if I google for: solar association, I receive 10 results on the front page, not including three advertisements plus a few more links categorized as news. My results were by no means identical; each (first) page listed associations that the other didn’t, but culling information from multiple sources to acquire a more robust breadth of knowledge is a trademark of our work.
P.S. Remember to be careful when searching with ultra generic keywords like “green” in a database. Yes “green” can refer to tree-hugging innovation, but it can also refer to localities with lots of trees, or even just the color.