2014 Review: As Volumes Intensify, Data Search Tools Get Smart

At the start of 2014, Thomson Reuters unveiled the fourth iteration of its Eikon data desktop, featuring new search features designed to make it easier for users to access the platform’s content and analytics. The new functionality allows clients to run natural-language search queries, marking a significant departure from traditional terminals that require users to remember shortcuts and codes. In addition, the system auto-suggests search terms, and also analyzes individuals’ usage patterns to understand what they typically search for, to deliver more targeted search results, mimicking functionality of traditional web search engines such as Google and targeted advertising on social media sites like Facebook.

UK-based Perfect Information, a provider of company and financial data, also recognized the value of Google-like search as a way to help users search its data, and in April released a new web-based interface, dubbed Filings Expert, to make it easier for analysts, lawyers, and mergers and acquisitions or equity and debt capital markets professionals to navigate its database.

In July, financial search engine provider 9W Search also added new natural-language search functionality to its web-based financial information search platform, leveraging IBM’s Watson artificial intelligence supercomputer. The new feature allows investors to query 9W’s structured and unstructured information about US public companies using Watson’s natural-language processing capabilities to understand plain text questions like “How many barrels of oil did Shell produce in 2011?” or “What was the revenue of Microsoft in 2006, and who was the CEO?”

Meanwhile Toronto-based economic and financial search engine start-up Quandl secured $5.4 million in funding from private equity firm August Capital in November to build out its premium content, and has since added fee-liable North American earnings estimates data from Chicago-based Zacks Investment Research, options data from Chicago-based options analytics provider Option Research and Technology Services, and fundamental data from startup fundamental data provider Sharadar, alongside its 10 million other free time-series datasets. Going forward, the vendor will continue to grow its premium content, with the ultimate aim of becoming the numerical data equivalent of Wikipedia, Quandl founder and chief executive Tammer Kamel said in October.

At the Asia Pacific Financial Information Conference, Interactive Data’s Goor also told delegates that firms who embrace current data volumes rather than attempting to reduce their intake are more likely to succeed in the long term. As such, the need for new search engines and sophisticated search functionality to navigate the deluge is likely to continue into 2015.