I just spent a few minutes creating some Google Alerts. From the alerts home page:
Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic.
I created a few alerts to monitor a few things that I am keeping my on. While I was at it, I created a few alerts to monitor if anybody ever says anything about me. Funny thing is, I’m not the only Josh Harrison in the world as Google sees it. Apparently, on works (or worked) at Microsoft, there is a football player somewhere, and some random guy. That is probably what the others say about me. I also created one to monitor picklewagon.
This is a pretty cool service. Everybody should set one up that wants to keep up with what others are saying about a particular topic. It’s missing one feature that I am interested in. I want the option to subscribe any of the alerts via RSS instead of email. You can subscribe to a search on Google’s Blog Search. Why isn’t the same option available with their alerts service? One of those Googlers should add the feature with their 20% time they have to work on pet projects. Google should just hire me so I can do it. What do you think, Google?
I love Google Alerts! I’m not currently using the feature but I have in the past. In fact, it’s how I use to get all of my news updates when I was running a Star Wars website. It provides a very easy way of gathering information. I also agree that a RSS feature would be great.
Google Alerts are great… and I didn’t know about them until you explained them to me a few months ago. Thanks again, Josh. This further proves my theory that I know nothing… so I ask you.