The Allure of the Alerts
The Potential Users of Google Alerts
Google Alerts is an extraordinarily useful tool for anyone with (1) internet access and (2) an interest in something or someone.
Conveniently, that category would seem to include everyone reading this Heck Of A Guy post.1
The Utility of Google Alerts
The concept behind Google Alerts is simple and straightforward.
A user tracks newly available information pertinent to his or her interests by automatically receiving Google Alerts - emails containing links to new results from any or all Google News, Web, Blogs, and Groups Searches for terms chosen by that user.
The Advantages of Google Alerts
Google Alerts are free, requiring only an email address.2 Users are limited to 1000 alerts sent to a single email address. To add more alerts, one must either delete old alerts and replace them with the new ones or use a second email address.
For anyone who has used the Google search engine, the learning curve for Google Alerts has only the slightest of slopes (approximately equivalent to the change in elevation of the interstate highway running through mid-Oklahoma). Creating new Alerts and making changes in existent Alerts are quickly and easily accomplished.
The Disadvantages of Google Alerts
Because Google Alerts are tied to Google searches, they reflect only those portions of the internet indexed by Google.
The algorithms aren’t perfect. While the point of Google Alerts is providing the users with links to new information or at least new search findings, I will occasionally find a link to web site that has been available for three or four years.
The How-To of Google Alerts
1. Go to http://www.google.com/alerts
Now, relax. You’ve completed the difficult part of this job.
2. In the top line (labeled “Search Terms”) of the Create A Google Alert box, keyboard in your search terms just as though you were entering them for a routine Google Search. All the same rules apply (e.g., terms in quotes are searched for as a phrase).
3. In the second line, labeled “Type,” choose the kind of search desired from the drop-down list. “Comprehensive” searches the web, blogs, news, and groups. For specific topics, you may wish to limit the search. If, for example, you are interested in authoritative medical research, you may not want to clutter your results with bloggers setting forth pet theories of the aluminum-foil-and-diet-cola-cause-athlete’s-foot variety.
4. In the third line, “How often,” choose the frequency of emails desired from the drop-down list: “once a day,” “as-it-happens,” and “once a week.”
5. In the final line, “Your email,” enter, ah, your email address.
6. Click “Create Alert” and await the info-bonanza.
If you have more than a handful of Alerts, the “Manage Your Alerts” page at http://www.google.com/alerts/manage is handy.
To create your own “Manage Your Alerts” page, you need a Google Account. If you don’t have one already, you can establish a Google account at http://www.google.com/accounts/ by supplying an email address and password.
Once you have a Google Account, go to http://www.google.com/alerts/manage where you will find something like this:
The search terms, frequency, and type of each Alert is displayed. The complete “Manage Your Alerts” page also has tools for editing, deleting, and adding Alerts. On that full page, you can also change the emails from the default HTML to Plain Text and vice-versa.
The Alerts-Alert and Alerts Alternatives Alert
Google Alert Vs Google Alerts: GoogleAlert is not Google Alerts. GoogleAlert (which may be written as one or two words) at http://www.googlealert.com/, as their fine print notes, “is not affiliated with Google.” That tool does, however, base its results on Google searches. 3 I’ve used GoogleAlert with no problems, and it seems to work well enough, but the free version is limited to five sets of search terms, the searches are web-only (i.e., they don’t include Google blogs, news, and groups searches), and I’ve detected no compensatory advantages to Google Alerts. Consequently, I don’t recommend it for most individual users.
Alternatives To Google Alerts: Other automated searches and clipping searches exist. I have, in fact, just signed up for Swamii, another freebie system, because some claim it displays results that don’t show up on Google.
Currently, however, I have inadequate experience with Swamii to evaluate it.
Possibly Useful Alerts
The list of potentially useful Alerts is limited only by ones own fascinations and creativity. These few examples provide a glimpse into the possibilities.
- Your own name
- Your Ex’s name
- Your home town4
- Your business’s name
- Your business category
- Your business competitors’ names
- Your clients’ names (if you sell to other companies or are Michael Ovitz)
- Your hobby (or, more likely, the hobby subcategory that holds the most interest for you)
- Your favorite singers, performers, directors, and other entertainment sorts
- Key phrases from your creative writing to track down plagiarists
- Your website URLs and email addresses
- Your blog or commenter pseudonym (e.g., “DrHGuy”)
- Names of diseases, medications, treatment, and medical research of import to you
- Research for blogs, books, and other writing
Footnotes
- This category includes “everybody reading the Heck of a Guy Blog” - at least now that the authorities at Gitmo and the CIA secret prisons have banned the practice of torturing detainees by forcing them to peruse this blog as “just too inhumane for us.” Because the use of waterboarding was reaffirmed as an acceptable interrogatory technique at the same meeting that banned coerced blog reading, these decisions have inevitably been paired and preserved in the argot as SYBO - Soggy Yes; Bloggy No↩
- A Google Account, also free, provides a useful management tool for Google Alerts but is not necessary for the service itself.↩
- And, as their FAQ notes, ” Google Alert is unaffiliated with Google, although we are in regular contact with them. Google Alert uses Google’s Web APIs to perform its searches. Google has generously provided Google Alert with a high-capacity Web APIs key for our needs, and agreed to the use of the Google Alert name and googlealert.com domain. Google has agreed to our release of professional paid Google Alert services.”↩
- If your home town is small enough. You New Yorkers, for example, may find an Alert for “New York, New York” problematic. I feel your pain and, consequently, hereby offer all those hailing from major urban centers permission to use my home town, “Diamond, Missouri,” as a search term.↩
