Google Alerts
We all know know and love Google, but how many people use its best investigative features? Investigations aren’t done in one day so why search Google on only one day?
Google Alert service is free and it allows you to create custom RSS feeds using Google search results, or you can receive the alerts by email. Thus, if you create focused searches using phrases, site qualifiers, etc. in Google, you now can have those results as a RSS Feed.
Login to you Google account, then use the advanced query options to construct your search. Select the Feed setting in the “Deliver to” column to activate your RSS feed. It’s that simple; there is no need to program a Google API. Alternatively, select email to have the results sent to you by email.
Your search can be set-up to notify you as the new data appears if you select email notification. You may select as-it-happens, daily, or weekly. Simply make the selection in the “How often” column. Of course the RSS feed option doesn’t need to be told when to send you the results, it captures new data as it appears and publishes it in the feed.
To receive the feed you will have to wait until it is populated with some results. Once there are results in the feed, you may then click on the feed link for the Alert and copy the URL into your newsreader. This takes about one day to occur in my experience.
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