Following on from a previous post about focusing on a specific task, I would like to mention an automated system provided by Google which I find almost as useful as RSS feeds. It’s called Google Alerts.
You will need to have a Google account to use the Alerts system. Once you have that you can login and create as many alerts as you like.
If you have a subject or website you are interested in, you can create an alert for the associated keyword(s), phrase(s) or domain name(s) and have an email sent to your nominated email address whenever the Googlebots come across your nominated words, phrases or domains whilst they are crawling the internet.
I find it particularly handy to have an email sent to me whenever a domain I am associated with is mentioned somewhere online. I was once alerted to a post that had been Dugg by a Google Alert and I will receive an email whenever a new (published) post has been spidered and indexed. The alerts can also inform you if the domain you are monitoring is hanging around bad neighborhoods (Google Webmaster Tools does all of this too, but you have to login and do the checking).
When creating an alert you can use the standard operators. For example, if you wish to receive an alert for a specific phrase you should enclose it in quotation marks – “google alerts” and if you want to receive an alert for all pages which has the words google and alerts you should use the + sign = google + alerts.
Currently there are six types of alert – Comprehensive, News, Web, Blogs, Videos and Groups and three interval periods – Once a Week, As It Happens and Once a Day. These settings can be changed at any time and mixed and matched to suit the alert. I get domain alerts and important keywords as they happen. I get other keywords I like to track once a day and I get yet more on a once a week basis.
On occasion you may well find that you are inundated by email alerts, especially if you receive alerts for very common phrases or words. If this happens you should change the frequency they are sent.
I would also advise you to set up ‘rules’ or ‘filters’ (depending upon which mail service you use) to filter the email alerts to specific folders for reading at a later date. I allow some to drop into my inbox, these are mainly domain rather than keyword related, and file them away once they have been read. If you don’t do this and you set up a number of (As It Happens) alerts, you will regret it quite quickly as you will start to receive alerts almost immediately.
The best thing about Google Alerts is that information is coming to me. I am not chasing it. This allows me to much more time do get on with other things.
Related posts:
- Google introduces longer snippets to search results
- Get an alert by email or SMS when your website goes down
- Take A Ride On The Google Search Engine Time Machine
- Google rolling out new real-time search feature
- Finally, confirmation from Google that the meta keywords tag is mickey mouse
- Google Launches New Blog Search Website
- Use Google Site Search via Analytics to see what your visitors are searching your site for
- Google AdWords account alert notification email – Fake?
- Google Finding Quotes
- Get Help and Advice in the Official New Google AdSense Forum
