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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Web Research Specialist

💰 $40,000 - $70,000

ResearchDataWebAnalyticsRemote

🎯 Role Definition

The Web Research Specialist is an expert in discovering, validating, and synthesizing information from online sources to support business decisions, market intelligence, content, product development, and lead-generation initiatives. This role leverages advanced search strategies, OSINT methodologies, web tools, and data validation techniques to deliver accurate, timely, and actionable insights. The Web Research Specialist partners with cross-functional teams (marketing, sales, product, legal, and data) to translate ambiguous information needs into repeatable, high-quality research outputs and structured deliverables.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Internet Researcher / Internet Analyst
  • Data Entry Specialist transitioning to research-focused roles
  • Market Research Assistant or Junior Competitive Intelligence Analyst

Advancement To:

  • Senior Web Research Specialist / Lead Internet Researcher
  • Competitive Intelligence Analyst / Senior Market Researcher
  • Research Operations Manager or Data Insights Manager

Lateral Moves:

  • Business Intelligence Analyst
  • Content Strategist with a research specialization

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Conduct comprehensive online investigations to locate, extract, and validate company, contact, product, and market information using search engines, social networks, public records, corporate filings, industry databases, and specialty websites; deliver findings in structured formats such as spreadsheets, CRM entries, or research reports.
  • Perform targeted lead-generation research to identify decision-makers, contact information, organizational structure, and buying signals; verify contact accuracy through multi-source cross-checking before CRM import.
  • Apply advanced Boolean search, Google dorking, and OSINT techniques to locate hard-to-find data, archived content, and non-indexed resources while documenting search queries and replicable methods.
  • Collect, clean, and normalize large volumes of web-derived data; resolve duplicate entries, standardize naming conventions, and apply data quality checks to ensure reliable downstream use.
  • Monitor and track competitor activity, product launches, pricing changes, and partnership announcements across web, social media, press releases, and regulatory filings to produce timely competitive intelligence summaries.
  • Conduct industry and market sizing research, aggregating primary and secondary sources to provide trend analysis, TAM/SAM/SOM estimates, and opportunity maps that inform strategic decisions.
  • Build and maintain curated research libraries, knowledge bases, and playbooks with annotated links, screenshots, and source citations to preserve institutional knowledge and accelerate repeatable research.
  • Produce clear, concise written deliverables — executive summaries, annotated bibliographies, competitor profiles, and step-by-step research notes — tailored to stakeholder needs and decision timelines.
  • Integrate research outputs with tools and systems (CRMs, spreadsheets, business intelligence platforms) using consistent tagging, metadata, and import-ready formatting for analysis or outreach campaigns.
  • Use basic scripting or no-code automation (e.g., Google Sheets scripting, Zapier, web scraping frameworks) to automate repetitive extraction, monitoring, and reporting tasks while respecting legal and terms-of-service constraints.
  • Conduct verification and due-diligence checks for third-party vendors, partners, and potential hires by aggregating online reputation, corporate registration, litigation records, and sanctions lists.
  • Run social media intelligence investigations to map networks, influencers, sentiment signals, and content origins, combining manual review with social listening tools to corroborate findings.
  • Support product and UX teams by researching customer pain points, feature requests, and sentiment by analyzing forums, review sites, and community platforms to surface actionable product insights.
  • Maintain research ethics and compliance by following privacy regulations, respecting robots.txt and site terms, and documenting source provenance and collection dates for auditability.
  • Design and implement recurring web monitoring and alerting for brand mentions, industry keywords, and targeted entities using RSS, alerting tools, and scheduled scraping processes.
  • Coordinate with legal and compliance teams to gather evidence for investigations, regulatory filings, and contract reviews, ensuring chain-of-custody and source credibility where required.
  • Execute ad hoc, hypothesis-driven research projects with minimal supervision, prioritizing tasks, estimating timelines, and delivering results that directly support stakeholder goals.
  • Train and mentor junior researchers by documenting best practices, conducting query reviews, and providing feedback on sourcing, validation, and reporting techniques.

Secondary Functions

  • Support ad-hoc data requests and exploratory data analysis.
  • Contribute to the organization's data strategy and roadmap.
  • Collaborate with business units to translate data needs into engineering requirements.
  • Participate in sprint planning and agile ceremonies within the data engineering team.
  • Assist marketing and sales teams by supplying market lists, enrichment data, and competitive talking points for campaigns.
  • Maintain vendor and subscription dashboards (e.g., LexisNexis, D&B, PitchBook) to ensure efficient utilization and recommend cost-effective resources.
  • Conduct quality audits of historical research datasets and recommend remediation steps for data drift or stale records.
  • Participate in cross-functional post-mortems and retrospectives to refine research workflows, templates, and tooling.
  • Create training materials and onboarding guides for research tooling, internal wikis, and knowledge repositories.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Advanced web search and information retrieval (Google Advanced Search, site:, filetype:, inurl:, cache:) and mastery of Boolean logic for high-precision discovery.
  • OSINT (Open-Source Intelligence) methods: public records, corporate registries, domain and DNS research, WHOIS, archived content retrieval, and investigative social media techniques.
  • Data collection and cleaning: web scraping fundamentals, using browser automation tools (Selenium, Puppeteer) or no-code scrapers (Octoparse, ParseHub), plus data cleansing in Excel/Sheets.
  • Proficiency with spreadsheets (MS Excel or Google Sheets) including VLOOKUP/XLOOKUP, INDEX/MATCH, pivot tables, array functions, and formula-driven data validation.
  • Experience with CRM platforms (Salesforce, HubSpot) for importing/updating records, deduplication, and enrichment workflows.
  • Familiarity with analytics and visualization tools (Looker, Tableau, Power BI, Google Data Studio) to present summarized insights and trends.
  • Knowledge of subscription and public research databases (LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Crunchbase, PitchBook, D&B Hoovers, Factiva) and best practices for extracting and validating data.
  • Basic scripting or programming competency (Python, R, or JavaScript) to automate data pulls, parse HTML/JSON, or run light ETL processes.
  • Use of monitoring and alerting tools (Google Alerts, Talkwalker, Mention, Meltwater) to set up and manage continuous surveillance of topics and entities.
  • Competence in documenting research methodology, source provenance, and reproducible search queries for auditability and handoffs.
  • Familiarity with data privacy and compliance principles (GDPR, CCPA) that impact data collection, storage, and sharing.
  • Experience with content archival tools (Wayback Machine), web archives, and digital preservation techniques.

Soft Skills

  • Strong analytical thinking with an ability to synthesize disparate inputs into concise, actionable insights.
  • Excellent written communication and storytelling: ability to craft executive summaries, research briefs, and annotated source lists.
  • Curiosity and intellectual rigor: persistent, methodical approach to follow complex research threads and verify claims.
  • Detail-oriented with high standards for data accuracy, source credibility assessment, and documentation completeness.
  • Time management and prioritization skills to manage multiple concurrent research requests and deadlines.
  • Collaboration and stakeholder management: translating business questions into research plans and presenting findings to non-technical audiences.
  • Adaptability: quick learner who stays current with new tools, sources, and search techniques.
  • Ethical judgment and discretion when handling sensitive information or conducting background checks.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Bachelor's degree or equivalent professional experience in a relevant field such as Information Science, Library Science, Business, Communications, or Data Analytics.

Preferred Education:

  • Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Information Science, Library & Information Studies, Data Analytics, Market Research, Journalism, Political Science, or Computer Science.

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Information Science / Library Science
  • Data Analytics / Statistics
  • Market Research / Business Administration
  • Computer Science / Information Technology
  • Journalism / Communications

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range:

  • 1–5 years performing online research, lead-generation, market intelligence, or OSINT investigations.

Preferred:

  • 3+ years of progressive experience in web research, competitive intelligence, digital investigations, or a related function and demonstrated history of delivering high-quality, auditable research products.
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