26 
O p i n i o n    S e c t i o n 

 

 

 

 

Competitive Intelligence cycle in the light of web 

2.0 tools 

 
Luc Quoniam 

1 
and Charles-Victor Boutet 

2 

1 
Laboratoire Paragraphe, Université Paris VIII, France 

2 
UFR Ingémedia, USTV, France 

Email: mail@quoniam.info, mnem00@gmail.com 

 

 

Received September 3 2013, accepted February 9, 2014 

 

ABSTRACT: We propose in this study, detailing our observations and research on the impact of the web 2.0, 

its associated tools, the cycle of the economic intelligence with new paradigms such as the many-to-many, new 

practices such as active SEO allow any individual, firm, to impact heavily on the aforementioned round, both in 

terms of information circulation, as data collection. 

KEYWORDS: Competitive Intelligence, Web 2.0, Intelligence Cycle,  

 

 

1. Introduction 

The information cycle in Figure 1 (or intelligence, 

or competitive intelligence system) is a central 

landmark in economic intelligence. It is most often 

represented in a series of stages from planning 

needs to information diffusion, steps that will refine 

raw information into intelligence (Dedijer, 1999). 

The information as such is a raw material. Refined 

(integrated / assimilated by the subject), it becomes 

knowledge (Stenmark, 2002)  

 

(Skryme, 2000) (Davenport, 1997). It is from this 

model that the cycle of information has been 

developed in the cycle which information is 

collected, organized, transmitted, evaluated, 

analyzed and made available to decision makers for 

inclusion in the decision making as shown in 

Figure 1. 

Available for free online at https://ojs.hh.se/ 

 

Journal of Intelligence Studies in Business Vol 4, No 1 (2014) 26-35 

mailto:mail@quoniam.info
mailto:mnem00@gmail.com
https://ojs.hh.se/


27 
O p i n i o n    S e c t i o n 

 
However, in recent years Internet 2.0 has spread: 

everyone can now easily create his own virtual 

territory composed of everything from one to 

thousands of sites, and virtually all the territories 

are considered to be participatory: everyone can 

write, promote his or her site (Boutet and Ben 

Amor, 2010). The many-to-many model allows for 

wide dissemination of information for everyone 

and enables SEO 2.0, whose heart activity is based 

on tools for mass application, allows, besides a 

better ranking, an echo globally as shown in Figure 

2, a de-facto better visibility. This participatory 

paradigm shift has prompted us to revisit the cycle 

in light of the aforementioned tools 2.0. 

 

 

 

 

Figure 1. Informational approach of the intelligence cycle 

1.2 Dissemination and active SEO 2.0: 

For clarity, we will refer to the concept of "2.0" as 

the broad consequence of a disruption technically 

very simple: rules for authorizing access to 

information systems: Internet, formerly 

ARPANET, was created to across UNIX systems 

and related products, and network architecture was 

(and still is) together with the software architecture 

of such systems. In this context, any resource is 

subject to access rights: Read, Write and Execute 

(RWX). Until the age of 2.0 (also known as 

writable web), the right to write access, which 

allows scientists to post comments on the weblog 

of an unknown, was strictly controlled as regards 

the web, simply prohibited. Since then, the norm is 

participatory and circulation of information: every 

internet user has the possibility of transmitting 

information, and with the right tools, engage in 

mass distribution. 

• automation by creating a constellation of linked 

websites, the user provides Internet users a vast 

window on the information he wants to 

communicate 

• communicating information is through 

automation on a variety of media allowing writing 

(blogs, forums, social bookmarking sites ...) as 

shown in Figure 3. 

 

. 



28 
O p i n i o n    S e c t i o n 

 

 

Figure 2. Geographical Visualization of global sources of visitors to the nutrisaveurs website after an 

Hispanic, Anglophone and Francophone active SEO campaign. The intensity of green color is 

proportional to the number of visits per territory.  

 

 

2. Glocadata harvesting 

 

The Web is a system originally designed for 

information management (Voss, 2007). Its 

system of full text automatic indexation 

(e.g. Google PageRank) has certain 

advantages. That said, in recent years, the 

manual indexing based on tags: 

folksonomies, has known a great success. 

This stigmergic
1
 process characterizes a 

collective intelligence leading to the 

marking of web pages with specific 

keywords, marking supposedly handmade 

synonymous with high congruence between 

the marked page and tags that are affixed 

and therefore reliability. Glocalization on 

Internet apparent from the technical aspect 

of the writable web that leads to the 

emergence of such uses. In this sense, Web 

2.0 gives users the ability to find, organize, 

share and create information in ways both 

personal is globally accessible (Martin, 

2007). This phenomenon of glocalization 

therefore allows precise adaptability of web 

resources for the user and is a way for 

anyone who uses “active SEO”, to allocate  

 

                                                           
1
 Stigmergy is a method of indirect communication 

in a self-organized emerging environment, where 
people communicate among themselves by 
changing their environment (Wikipedia). 

 

 

the data it publishes, synchronously or not, 

other users efficiently as shown in Figure 2.  



29 
O p i n i o n    S e c t i o n 

 
 

 
Figure 3. Information push carried on the social bookmarking site myhealthclips.com for the 

hypcaloric meals brand nutrisaveurs. Green, tags selected by us: "slimming", "diet", “régimen" 

(Hispanic), "health", "food" that will allow any user seeking one of these words to find our 

publication. In red, the title link leads to the website of the acclaimed brand. 

 

3.1 Some implications on the intelligence cycle 

3.1 Diffusion-collection impact: 

At first glance, one may think of this cycle as an 

intern to a structure or an organization. However, 

the possibility of mass dissemination of 

information from a company "A" by the means 

aforesaid will possibly impacting on the collection 

of data from companies X, Y and Z such that 

illustrated in Figure 4. 

 

3.2 Lobbying by diffusion-collection impact: 

Visibility on the internet is a major issue because 

who is visible will generate traffic on a website of 

the reputation / legitimacy-about-to-one-keyword 

and sales. On the other hand, it is established that a 

surfer since cognitively limited in the act of 

searching through an engine, will restrict the 

navigation of some items among the first results 

given by the search engine (Loc. cit., Boutet and 

Ben Amor) (AT Internet Institute, 2009) (iProspect,  

 

2006), it is important to be at the top of search 

results for a given keyword
2
. 

 

                                                           
2
 Keyword: for a search engine, expression 

composed of one or several words. 



30 
O p i n i o n    S e c t i o n 

 

 

Figure 4. Synoptic view of the impact of the mass distribution of information on collecting through the prism of 

intelligence cycles of several companies 

 

3.2.1: Finding the right keyword 

To be visible on the internet, one must still find a 

keyword inherent in his heart craft capable of 

trafficking. On this point, Google offers “keywords 

tools” shown in Figure 5, which bases its results on 

one side past queries users collected through 

cookies that expire in the very long term to permit a 

grouping of keywords and the other on statistics 

compiled by the firm of Mountain View that 

quantify the research done on a keyword and to 

deduce the potential traffic obtained according to a 

geographical area and a target language for the 

website in the first position results following search 

criteria. 

3.2.2: competitive analysis on the chosen 

keyword 

Google sets its ranking following its famous 

algorithm: PageRank. If the latter is subject to a 

policy of opacity on the part of the firm, some 

parameters leading to a high ranking are notorious.  

 

A number of the most important are in the module 

"SEO competition software market samurai", 

which provides a global view of competition on a 

certain keyword as shown in Figure 6. 

The critical indicators include age of the domain 

name (DA Column), the pagerank (PR Column), 

the number of pages indexed by google for that 

area (IC column: index count) and finally the 

columns BLP (backlink page) and BLD (backlink 

domain), respectively the number of backlinks 

pointing to the page in this classification and those 

pointing to the domain name of this page. Given 

these results, it is possible to estimate whether a 

positioning among the top 10 (accessed by a 

majority of Internet users) is possible or not. 

Typically, a small number of backlinks from one of 

the top ten shows that we can reasonably expect to 

run for his spot, especially with us using the 

contributory aspect of Web 2.0. Indeed, we have 

the ability to post content including trackbacks 

(such <A http://www.mydomain.com> competitive 



34 
O p i n i o n    S e c t i o n 

 
intelligence </ a>) that link to this site on any 

media type 2.0  

 

 

Figure 5. Proposal for keywords related to "competitive intelligence" language: French, Territory: France 

assorted research estimated monthly - provided by Google Keyword Tool. 

  

 
Figure 6. Top ten results for keyword "competitive intelligence" on google.fr French, established by the 

software market samurai on 14/02/2011.  

 

3.2.3 Massively disseminate information 

Web 2.0 allows anyone to create blogs hosted on 

dedicated platforms for this purpose. We can 

choose to disseminate information on our forums, 

wiki, weblogs, or third parties on our own media, in 

Figure 7, the screen capture tool "link farm  

 

evolution” which allowed us to create weblogs on 

6149 third-party platforms: Web 2.0 allows the 

construction of territories potentially unlimited and 

to massively disseminate our information to get  



32 
O p i n i o n    S e c t i o n 

 
 

better visibility, the mere existence of these 

territories, but also because Google will collect the 

information we have widely distributed among 

them. 

Proof is that the top ten results on google.fr French 

language for the query "competitive intelligence", 

are three of our websites on 14/02/2011 as shown 

in Figure 6: 

http://competitive-intelligence.blackhattitude.org is 

at rank 3, http://quoniam.info rank 5 and 

http://competitive-intelligence.charles-victor-

boutet.fr to rank 6. We expand on this type of 

manoeuvre to the next (called SERP
3
 domination) 

which is a strategy of influence pay (infra,) since it 

can give legitimacy to whoever takes many good 

positions on a particular keyword since "we must 

find ways to understand issues related to influence 

strategies implemented by various public and 

private actors (including lobbying) and apply the 

techniques of persuasion and influence” 

(Mongereau, 2006). 

 

                                                           
3
 SERP: (Search engine Result Pages) search 

results classified by search engines. 

http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=fr&sl=fr&tl=en&prev=_t&u=http://competitive-intelligence.blackhattitude.org
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=fr&sl=fr&tl=en&prev=_t&u=http://quoniam.info
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=fr&sl=fr&tl=en&prev=_t&u=http://competitive-intelligence.charles-victor-boutet.fr
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=fr&sl=fr&tl=en&prev=_t&u=http://competitive-intelligence.charles-victor-boutet.fr


33 
O p i n i o n    S e c t i o n 

 

 
 

Figure 7. Screenshot of the software "link farm evolution”: we've created a virtual territory consisting of 6149 

blogs that are both 6149 locations spread our information and as many sources by which Google will collect 

its information 

 

4. Information overload and speed  

"The constant growth of information internationally 

[...] is a problem which questions: how this 

information will be built, combined and processed" 

(Dou et al., 2003) a fortiori since the 2.0 many-to-

many context allows a greater flow of information, 

obviously in number and in speed, as tools to 

facilitate the disclosure of more instantaneous 

while requiring less knowledge of computers have 

emerged (Weblogs, Twitter, Buzz ...). Indeed, since 

the first automation devices for establishing route 

information from one individual to another during 

the years 1940 (Rasse, 2005) until now, 

information is increasing in speed (up to 

microseconds for High Frequency Trading
4
) 

transmission. 

The knowledge economy is an economy of speed: 

values are not stocks that are preserved in time, 

they decrease with the increasing speed of the 

process (Quoniam and Boutet, Loc. Cit.). To 

extract value from knowledge, then it must 

accelerate their use by the widest possible 

dissemination and at the same time, often precisely 

because of its dissemination, knowledge is 

socialized. That is to say, it becomes common 

heritage to competitors and potential users. It is the 

parable of the cathedral and the bazaar (Raymond, 

2001) - in fact, the widely disseminated 

information is widely harvested. This synergy has a 

major impact on the cycle of EI), the face of this 

profusion, facilitated by the rapid development of 

Internet and its applications, [...] How to find,  

                                                           
4
 High Frequency Trading: an algorithmic trading 

subclass, based on short term trading. i.e. a scalping 

technique at the computer scale (micro-seconds). 

 

organize, disseminate relevant information, that 

giving comparative advantage to the company? 

(Domenech et al., 2009). Although "Our culture 

may be less predisposed to such practices. Yet they 

are essential (Ibid.). 

4.1 Overload influence strategy 

The possibilities are a factor of 2.0 increase in the 

aforesaid information overload and it is possible, 

for who knows this and understands the 

fundamentals of the vertical model data display 

used by the vast majority of engines, to monopolize 

the space on a desired search term as shown in 

Figure 8: on the sales site eBay: The seller of many 

USB memory-sticks instead of using the less 

expensive Hollandaise auction  system (a single 

announce for N times the same object),  made the 

choice to pay N times tcost of listing to occupy the 

first pages in search engines. 

 



34 
O p i n i o n    S e c t i o n 

 
 

 
 

Figure 8. The same product occupies the front pages of research on research "USB", thus obscuring 

the competition in the eyes of potential customers. 

 

As users see few results, and this "few" being 

situated among two or first three results pages (AT 

Internet Institute, 2009) (iProspect, 2006), a 

strategy of the screen where the information secret 

information (Ramonet, 2001) is implemented: we 

are seen and our competitors are overlooked de 

facto. Figure 8 also illustrates the principle of 

"SERP domination." 

 

4.2 Push-Pull 

 

RSS aggregators are a good example of 

glocalization data (supra.): the user can choose to 

unionize a site that provides information via a data 

flow (aka RSS) which allows him to obtain 

information in real time, using XML technology 

used to transmit the information content while the 

"presentation layer" will be managed by the RSS 

reader (Quoniam and Boutet, 2008). 

During an information pull phase (first visit to a 

source of information and inclusion in RSS feeds), 

the user initiates a push by registering information: 

Information will now be to him and not vice versa. 

Instead of having to introduce robots which will 

regularly collect information for him, or worse, to  

 

 

navigate himself to the information, the user is in a 

position facilitating ingenium
5
 (Le Moigne, 2006), 

(Ciceron, 2003): From one end of this mental area 

to another, there are such distances we have never 

traveled
6
 (Valery, 1992). Between folksonomy and 

information intensive push-pull through “active 

SEO”, 2.0 aspect heavily impacts on the process of 

data collection. 

Conclusion 

 

The 2.0 aspect changes everything in terms of 

communication, information flow: the many-to-

many, massive editing allows global impact, both 

in broadcasting as the harvesting, but also through 

the analysis tools needed to grip plethora of 

information that we have addressed in this article, 

therefore, the tools of 2.0 have a strong impact on 

the cycle of EI since are actually intended to handle 

the massive information. They offer attractive 

opportunities, particularly in terms of lobbying and 

are in fact, quite destined to occupy a major place 

in competitive intelligence in the future. It is 

possible to consider the cycle of EI as a new day cf. 

Figure 4, days that we will discuss extensively in 

the course of our future research. 

                                                           
5
 Ingenium: this strange faculty of the mind is to 

discern and relate to conjoin (Le Moigne, 2006) 
6
 We see here a concept of mental area, concept on 

which de Rosnay and Schaer (2008) ask: what will 

happen when all humans will be interconnected? 



35 
O p i n i o n    S e c t i o n 

 
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