OSINT: Advanced Search Skills (3 Days)
Knowing how to navigate the many levels of the internet and overcome the limitations of traditional search engines is key to surfacing competitive insights or advancing national interests. This course will show you how to plan, organise and execute a rigorous research plan across the many layers of the Internet. We’ll guide you through a portfolio of search tools and strategies to mine the web as thoroughly as possible and surface information that might never appear in your search results. We’ll also show you how to scrape, capture, organise and process the data you collect using the latest AI tools, thus improving your research efficiency further.
Course Outline
Planning Your Research
Introduction to Advanced Search
- Advanced Search: definitions, challenges, principles, and axioms for OSINT practitioners
- A typology of search strategies and domains
- The mindset, skillset, and toolset of successful online researchers
Advanced Keyword Indexing
- Extending your keyword index
- Keyword research tools
- Working with online dictionaries
- Working with SEO tools
Browser / Toolkit Setup
- Configuring your browser
- Recommended browser extensions
- Recommended desktop tools
- Setting up your AI tools / workspaces
Mastering Google and Going Beyond
Advanced Search Strategies for Google
- Mining the web with advanced queries
- Working with URL conventions
- Working with search parameters
- Working with dork and exploit databases
- Searching in foreign languages
- Managing and manipulating your results
- Developing a custom search cookbook
Searching Beyond Google
- The varieties of search engines
- Choosing the right search engine
- Working with Bing, DuckDuckGo and Yandex
- Layering and comparing results
- Working with foreign-language search engines
- Working with specialist search engines
- Working with search extensions
Searching with AI
- AI-based search strategies
- AI-enabled search tools
- Searching via LLMs
- Verifying your results
- Benefits and limitations of AI-powered search
Working with Google's Custom / Programmable Search Tool
- Building a programmable / custom search engine
- Defining your source base
- Configuring your search engine
- Finding third-party search engines online
- Monitoring the web for new search engines
Leveraging Your Search Results
Scraping your Search Results
- Working with browser-based scrapers
- Working with third party scrapers
- Scraping data via AI tools
AI-Powered Tools for Processing Search Results
- Creating your workspace
- Importing your research results
- Querying your search results
- Data processing and summarisation
- Citation extraction and management
- Note taking
Advanced Research and Data Management
- Personalising your research productivity
- Key principles of effective data management
- Understanding data quality issues
- Data validation schemas
Course Details
Who is this Course For?
This course is intended for anyone wishing to strengthen their online research skills. It is also of value to people wishing to build a knowledge base to use with the latest AI tools.
How You Benefit
On completion of this course you will have the ability to:
- Maximise your research efficiency and effectiveness
- Apply an extended portfolio of search tools and strategies
- Mine the many levels of the internet for relevant information
- Build and maintain custom search tools and "cookbooks"
- Validate the information collected using different schemas
- Use web scrapers to capture and organise relevant information
- Manage your research findings to improve learning and sharing
- Leverage the latest AI tools in support of your work
What You Receive
- A certificate of completion
- A full set of course slides / user guides in PDF
- Tip sheets and cheat sheets to enable rapid learning
- An index of recommended OSINT tools
- Six months of post-course support
Course Prerequisites
This course assumes you are familiar with basic search operators and generic OSINT processes (requirements planning, keyword indexing, data collection, data collation, etc.). We also assume you have a solid working knowledge of major web services and social media platforms. We recommend that participants wishing to take this course first complete our OSINT: Foundations course.
Technical Requirements
Please observe the following requirements:
- You will need a Windows or Mac laptop (tablet computers are not recommended)
- Install Google Chrome. You will be required to install a range of browser extensions, so it is important that you have administrative rights to your laptop
- Install Microsoft Office
- Set up a Google account to facilitate the use of different tools
Additional software requirements will be sent prior to the start of the course.
