How do I search Mergent Online?

Step 1:

Access Mergent Online. (If you're off-campus, you will be prompted to login with your myPVCC username and password.)
 

Step 2:

Mergent Online is most useful for looking up data on specific companies.  You will find their history, list of executives and owners, stock prices, revenue, debt load, annual reports, recent news articles, a list of competitors, and much more.  Consider it a "fact sheet" on a companies - both active and defunct.  To search for a company:

1. Enter the company name in the search box.  
2. Note that a number of options will appear.  Many of these are "inactive" companies that have gone defunct either through mergers, acquisitions, or bankruptcy.  Unless you are researching an inactive company, select the one without that label.
3. You can limit your results by deselecting the "inactive" databases or the international databases, if you know it's an American company.  In addition, the default search is for publicly-traded companies.  You can select the "D&B Private Company Database" to search for private companies.  

Step 3:

Click the tabs on the company page to navigate to the information you are seeking.

• There are many other searches available in Mergent.  For example, you can pull up a list of business in a specific category, such as "museums" or "general medical and surgical hospitals."  You do this using the classification search.  Select "Primary NAICS Code", limit by United States (if necessary), and click "use code lookup."  Browse through to find the specific industry that you're interested in and select it.  Click Search.
  
   
• You can also do an advanced search.  For example, you can find a list of companies in Virginia with more than 200 employees.  Select the "USA Company Database (active)" and enter your criteria.  Note the number of companies listed as "Matches" and click "View" next to the list of matches you want to see.  
  
   
• You can also find country profiles with economic and other statistical data on that country.  Select the country from the drop-down menu on the homepage.