One of our goals at bizologie is to help you keep up with free resources for business research. Here are a few of our favorite sites, tools and tactics for doing business research on a shoestring budget:

Favorite Tactics
Favorite Tools
Finance
General Business
International Statistics
Marketing, Advertising, & Shoppers
Oil & Gas
Private Companies- Domestic
Private Companies- International
Public Companies
Statistics & Government Data
Technology & Social Media
Venture Capital & Private Equity

You’ll also find a few free research reports here.

You’ll find ways to track down email addresses for CEOs or other high ranking executives here.

Save a more than a few bucks on market research reports with these helpful tips.

Find tips on how to research a private company here.

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Compete: Web traffic statistics

comScore: The press release page offers charts, graphs, and data on consumer and market trends for digital technologies and Internet web site market share rankings

BatchGeo: Make maps from a list of multiple locations, use addresses or zip codes

Speek: Super simple conference calling. No dial-ins, no pins, no downloads.

10 Minute Mail: Disposable email service

VisualBee Plugin: 50 free templates for PowerPoint, you put in text and then VisualBee does the design

LiveLoop Plugin: Real-time collaboration in PowerPoint. Sign up to test in private beta

Prezi: Cloud-based presentation software that is cross between whiteboard and slides

FindThatFile:  Searches FTP sites and repositories

Mailtester allows users to confirm email addresses. Mailtester is perfect for helping track down addresses for CEOs or other company executives.

Aviary: Tools for editing images, audio, and video

SnipSnip allows you to take any YouTube video and crop out just the parts you need.

PDFUnlock Simply upload the PDF you’d like to unlock and they’ll take care of it for you.

SpyFu: Keywords with Highest Cost Per Click

Quantcast:  Web traffic statistics

Bliss Control: Easily manage settings for all your social networks

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Finance

Google Finance: Current, but most importantly, historical stock prices by day up to 35 years

CPI Inflation Calculator: From the Bureau of Labor Statistics, what was the dollar worth

Investopedia: Finance education – dictionary, calculators, tutorials, videos

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EMPORIS: Commercial Real Estate Information by city, tallest buildings

ThomasNet: Directory of manufacturers

Business School FAQ: Penn Libraries specific, but an excellent way to determine which resources print and databases have the answers to  your business questions

Trade show News Network:  Tradeshow directory

Clinical Trials.gov: Clinical trials directory

U.S. Commercial Service: Trade professionals in over 100 U.S. cities and in more than 75 countries that help U.S. companies get started in exporting or increase sales to new global markets

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CIA World Factbook: Statistics on population, GDP, and more, plus maps

Worldometers: Live statistics on population, government and economics, society and media, environment, food, water, energy and health

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GMA: Grocery Manufacturers Association shopper data

Marketing Charts: Data and charts for marketers

Digital Music News: iTunes top 100, biggest movers, top ipad music apps

Box Office Mojo:  Tracks US and  international movie sales

American Pet Products Association: Statistics on pet ownership

Wards Auto: Car and truck sales data

IAB’s Industry Data & Landscape

Duke University’s Digital Advertising Collection

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The U.S. Energy Information Administration–Here you’ll find crude oil spot prices (current & historic back to 1986), weekly gas prices by region, U.S. production of oil all the way back to 1920 and monthly imports of crude oil by country. They also publish This Week in Petroleum which comes out every Wednesday.

The American Petroleum Institute–The API is a trade association representing all aspects of the oil and gas industry from refiners to pipeline operators. The API collects, maintains and publishes “statistics and data on all aspects of U.S. industry operations, including supply and demand for various products, imports and exports, drilling activities and costs, and well completions.”

Baker Hughes–If you’re looking for rig counts, Baker Hughes is the place to go. A rig count is the  “number of drilling rigs actively exploring for or developing oil or natural gas”. Here you can find current and historic rigs counts all the way back to 1968.

Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries–OPEC publishes the Monthly Oil Market Report covering things like world oil supply & demand, commodity markets, world economy, the tanker market and the oil trade. This month’s report is 72 pages and it’s yours for the taking. You can get free reports back to 2001. They also have annual reports back to 2001 and a recent joint report  with World Bank, the OECD and the IEA.

Environmental Protection Agency–The EPA provides regulatory information for the petroleum sector. Here you can find laws, regulations and policies affecting the industry.

Energy Information Administration: All things oil, gas, and sustainable energy

BP Statistical Review of World Energy: This annual publication is released every June and provides data across a variety of energy sectors (oil, natural gas and coal, to name a few) using various data points, including consumption, production and reserves.

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CrunchBase: Database of technology firms, funding information provided

The American City Business Journals or, more commonly, BizJournal: BizJournal comes out every week and covers 62 markets nationwide. Some of their information is subscription-based but a fair amount of it is available freely on their websites. This is a great place for local, in-depth articles on private companies.

FormDs.com: See who’s raising money

Guidestar: Form 990 from Non-profits

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Austria: Weiner Zeitung

Belgium: National Bank of Belgium (in the Central Balance Sheets Office)

France: Coface ORT

Germany: Common Register Portal of the German Federal States

Ireland: The Companies Registration Office

Italy: Italian Chambers of Commerce – Companies Register

Netherlands: Trade Registry of the Chamber of Commerce

Spain: InfoLine (English site in progress)

United Kingdom: Companies House WebCheck

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The Official Board: Organizational Charts for the world’s 30,000 largest corporations

WSJ Market Data Center: Stock market research

Forbes Global 2000–The World’s Biggest Public Companies

EDGAR: free SEC filings

Purdue: Historical annual reports, interlibrary loan the print copies from your local library

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Corruption Perception Index:  Visual representation of corruption by country

Zanran:  Numerical search – find data and statistics

Data.gov: Machine readable datasets from Uncle Sam

Economic Census 2007: Every 5 years, counts businesses, employees and payroll, down to the zip code

ESRI: Tapestry segmentation describes neighborhoods by lifestyle and lifestage of the community, search by zip

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Check Facebook: Facebook user statistics

VGChartz: Video games and console sales data

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PricewaterhouseCoopers MoneyTree Report–Here you’ll find investments by region, industry and deal stage as well as historical trend data and definitions.

Prequin–Here you’ll find information on fundraising and deals. They also publish The Preqin Quarterly which “outlines the latest developments in the Private Equity, Real Estate and Infrastructure industries over the most recent quarter-year period.”

National Venture Capital Association–NVCA has a great “Stats & Research” page where you’ll find fund raising, performance and exit data. Near the bottom of the page you’ll see recent studies which includes the “NVCA Yearbook.”

Wall Street Journal’s Venture Capital Dispatch–”An inside look from VentureWire at high-tech start-ups and their investors.”

New York Times DealBook–”DealBook is a financial news service reporting on mergers, acquisitions, venture capital and hedge funds and is produced by The New York Times.”

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