google alerts power primer:

8/14/2019 Google Alerts Power Primer:

1/21

GGooooggllee AAlleerrttss PPoowweerr PPrriimmeerr::5500 TTiippss,, TTeecchhnniiqquueess && WWoorrkkaarroouunnddss

BByy AAddaamm GGrreeeennMMrr.. GGooooggllee AAlleerrttss

AAlleerrttRRaannkk..ccoomm


2/21

Google Alerts Power Primer Page 2 of 21

2009 by Adam GreenThe copyright of this work belongs to the author, who is solelyresponsible for the content. This work is licensed under theCreative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No DerivativeWorks 3.0 United States License. To view a copy of this license,

visit Creative Commonsor send a letter to Creative Commons, 559Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, California 94305, USA.

AlertRank is not affiliated with Google, its services or any of itssubsidiaries.

The cover image and images within this eBook are fromiStockphoto.

About the AuthorAdam Green is the CEO of AlertRank.com, an online blog

relationship management application. He blogs atAlertRank.com/MrGoogleAlerts. Please feel free to contact Adamwith any questions or comments you might have about this eBook.His email address is [email protected].

Share this eBookYou have the unlimited right to distribute and share this eBook. Youcan email it, print it, and copy it to your website. You may not alter itor charge for it.

SubscribeSign up for our free email newsletterto receive daily Google Alertstips from Adam.
http://creativecommons.org/http://www.alertrank.com/http://alertrank.com/mrgooglealertshttp://www.alertrank.com/google-tips.htmlhttp://www.alertrank.com/google-tips.htmlhttp://alertrank.com/mrgooglealertshttp://www.alertrank.com/http://creativecommons.org/


3/21


Google Alerts setup

You dont have to use a Google email address or even have aGoogle account to use Google Alerts. You can just type yoursearch terms as you would for a normal Google search, enter an

email address to receive the alerts, and click Create Alert. You cancreate up to 1,000 alerts in this way for a single email address.

Google will send you a verification email with a link that you need toclick to have the alerts start. This prevents someone from directingalerts to you without your approval.

The default type of alert is Comprehensive, which covers 5 differentGoogle search services. You can choose a specific source, such asnews.

You can also specify the frequency of email delivery. The default isonce a day, but if you want to be able to respond quickly to

mentions of something like your companys name, you can havethe alert sent as soon as Google finds it. For less time-criticalsearches, you can select once a week emails.
http://www.google.com/alertshttp://www.google.com/alerts


4/21


If you create alerts while logged into a Google account, they will becollected into a single page that lets you manage them.

From this page you can edit the query, or change the alert sourceand frequency. You can also create new alerts and delete existingalerts. One convenience of creating alerts while logged in is thatGoogle wont send you emails to verify each new alert.

Google Alerts never gives you an error message when you create anew alert. It just accepts your query, even if it makes no sense. Soyou should test all your alert queries with a normal Google search

first. This will let you see if you are likely to find the type of itemsthat youd expect. It will also tell you if anything can be found.

Its easy to be overwhelmed if you create lots of alerts. One way ofcoping with this is to create a separate Gmail account just for youralerts. If you are an active Google Alerts user, you should try outAlertRank, our Google Alerts add-on. It has many features thatmake it easier to manage large numbers of alerts.
http://www.google.com/alerts/managehttps://alertrank.com/https://alertrank.com/http://www.google.com/alerts/manage


5/21


#1: Single word search

The simplest alert is based on a single word:book

Google looks for this word, and common variants, such as plurals.Looking for book will also find books.The automatic search forvariations is called stemming. A common example of stemming isadding ing to verbs, so searching for swim will also findswimming.

#2: Single word without stemming

You can turn off stemming by preceding a word with the + sign:+book

This will only find book, but not books or booking. The + signmust be placed before a word without any spaces in between.Turning off stemming is useful when searching for brand names,since it makes sure you only see mentions of the exact word youare looking for.

#3: Turning off stemming with quotes

Another way of finding exact matches without stemming is tosurround it with quotes:book

#4: Multiple word search

An alert with multiple words will search for items that contain all ofthese words:book shop

Google will apply stemming to each of these words, and will find thewords in any order. The words dont have to be next to each other.In this example, book and shop can be anywhere in the found

item.

Google will also look for combinations of these words.Combinations can result in different results, depending on the wordorder in the alert. For example, an alert for book shop will also findbookshop. An alert for shop book wont find bookshop, but it willfind book shop.


6/21


#5: Multiple words without stemming

You can turn off stemming in a multiple word alert by using the +sign with each word:+book +shop

This will keep variations like book shopping from being found. Itwill also block word combinations, so bookshop wont be foundeither. You can apply the + sign to one or more of the words in thealert, such as book +shop to block book shopping from beingfound.

#6: AND is ignoredSome search engines allow you to combine search words with ANDas a way of specifying that all the words must be found. Google

ignores AND in alerts, since it already assumes that all the wordsyou enter must be found. In effect a space between words is usedas an and by Google. Database people call this an implcit and. Analert for pizza beer means a search for both pizza and beer.

#7: Finding any of the search terms

The common alternative to AND is OR, which means that itemswith any of the words should be found. OR is recognized byGoogle:pizza OR beer

This will find either word in the results. You can combine severalwords with OR, such as pizza OR beer OR burgers, to find any ofthese words. The OR must be in upper case. Using or instead willbe ignored by Google.

#8: Alternative for ORA more geeky way of specifying an OR search is the | character,which is commonly called a bar:

pizza | beer

This will find the same items as pizza OR beer.


7/21


#9: Grouping search words

You can group a series of words separated with OR by surroundingthem with parenthesis. For example:pizza (beer OR wine)

This results in a search for pizza and beer, or pizza and wine. Thesame search can also be written as pizza (beer | wine).

#10: Searching for phrases

You can search for an exact phrase by putting the words in quotes:book shop

This will only find items where the words are next to each other, in

the same order as in the search phrase, and without any stemming.It will also prevent your finding combinations of the words as asingle world. In this example, bookshop wont be found. If you arelooking for a product or company name that contains multiplewords, it is best to put the words in quotes.

#11: Finding stop words

Google ignores extremely common words, especially words of onlya few characters, such as the and if. These are called stop words.For example, if you search for book in a month, you are going tofind matches for just book and month.

There are two solutions for this problem. If you want your search toinclude stop words, but dont care about the order, or whether theyare next to each other, you can put a + sign in front of the stopword. This basically means that the word must be included:book +in +a month

If you want all the words to be found as a complete phrase, you canput them all in quotes:book in a month


8/21


#12: Blocking words

The opposite of a + sign in front a word is the - sign:book month -of

This means that you dont want to see results that include thisword. This example will let you find results for book and month,but will weed out all the matches for book of the month.

#13: Finding related words

Placing a tilde (~) in front of a word will find items that containrelated words as well:~food

Searching for ~food also finds matches for cook, cuisine,

nutrition, restaurant, and recipe. This is based on Googlesawareness of common synonyms, so it makes an interesting way ofbroadening a search to find common groups of words. It alsoprovides insights into what Google thinks are popular usagepatterns.

For example, Google thinks that new is a synonym of cool, but notvice-versa. If you search for ~cool, you will also get matches fornew, but searching for ~new doesnt find cool. ~new does findlatest, however, and ~latest finds live and current.

#14: Searches are limited to 32 words

Not that you are likely to reach this limit, but it is good to knowexactly how many words you can enter in an alert.

#15: Searching for a range of numbers

You can specify a range of numbers by separating the starting andending numbers with two periods (..). The entire range must bewritten with no spaces:

super bowl 1990..1999

This query will find all entries that mention Super Bowls from 1990to 1999. Dont be misled into thinking that Google is being smartabout dates. It is just looking for the numbers 1990 through 1999.The number range will also work within quotes. If you create analert for super bowl 1990..1999, you will only see items wherethe number follows immediately after the word bowl.


9/21


#16: Wildcard search

Sometimes you want to create an alert for a phrase, but you needto see variations on some of the words. This can be done bysubstituting the word that could change with an asterisk:

happily * after

This will show you all the variations of the common expressionhappily ever after. What if you want to only see variations of thisphrase that dont use the word ever? Easy, just addever at theend:happily * after -ever

#17: Searching in the page title

You can use intitle: as a way of narrowing down alerts to items that

contain keywords within the title of a Web page, blog post, groupmessage or news item:intitle:pizza

There cant be any spaces between intitle: and the keyword youare searching for.

#18: Searching for multiple words in a title

If you want to find multiple words in a title, you can use intitle: foreach word:intitle:pizza intitle:beer

If you separate the intitle: keywords with spaces, all of them mustbe in the title. OR can be used instead to find any of the words:intitle:pizza OR intitle:beer

Sometimes certain keywords dominate the results. These wordscan be blocked from the titles of results by preceding them with the

sign:intitle:pizza -intitle:dominos

#19: List of words in a title

Instead of using intitle: with each word in a list, allintitle: is ashortcut that will search for a series of words in the title:allintitle:pizza beer wine


10/21


Allintitle: will also accept a phrase in quotes, if you need all thewords to be together, and want to turn off stemming:allintitle:book shop

#20: Searching in page text

You can use intext: to narrow down alerts to items that containkeywords within the text of a Web page, blog post, group messageor news item:intext:pizza

There cant be any spaces between intext: and the keyword youare searching for.

#21: Multiple words in page text

If you want to find multiple words in the text area, you can useintext: for each word:intext:pizza intext:beer

If you separate the intext: keywords with spaces, all of them mustbe in the text. OR can be used instead to find any of the words:intext:pizza OR intext:beer

Words can be blocked from the text of results by preceding themwith the sign:intext:pizza -intext:dominos

#22: List of words in page text

Allintext: is a shortcut that will search for a series of words in thetext:allintext:pizza beer wine

Allintext: will also accept a phrase in quotes, if you need all thewords to be together, and want to turn off stemming:allintext:book shop

#23: Searching within a URL

Inurl: searches for keywords within a URL, which is one of themost descriptive parts of a page:inurl:library


11/21


Stemming is not used with inurl:. For example, searching for justlibrary will find libraries as well, but inurl:library doesnt findURLs that contain libraries. You have to use multiple searchescombined with OR, if you want to find multiple variations of a word:Inurl:library OR inurl:libraries

#24: Matching complete words in a URL

Inurl: has an odd way of dealing with matching part of a URL. It willfind words that are part of a URL, but it wont find parts of words.This is easier to explain with a few examples.

If you set up an alert for inurl:cook, you will find URLs that containcook as part of a larger URL, such as cookmedical, orcookcounty. If you try searching for inurl:coo, you wont findeither of these URLs, but you will find coocooclub.

The basic rule seems to be that Google treats the characters youput after inurl: as a complete word, and only finds matches for thatword.

#25: Searching for US state sites

State sites generally have URLs that use the state abbreviationfollowed by either .gov, .org, or .us. You can set up an alert forpages from a specific state with the pattern inurl:state.(gov ORorg OR us):

inurl:il.(gov OR org OR us)

This can be also be extended to search for multiple states:inurl:(il OR ma).(gov OR org OR us)

#26: Searching for financial sites

An interesting trick for finding items from financial sites is to useinurl: with a stock symbol:inurl:goog

If you search for the stock symbol without inurl:, you will find lots ofitems about that stocks company, but generally the URL onlycontains the symbol if it is a site focusing on financial issues.


12/21


#27: Searching for multiple words in a URL

If you want to find multiple words in a URL, you can use inurl: foreach word:inurl:pizza inurl:beer

If you separate the inurl: keywords with spaces, all of them mustbe in the text. OR can be used instead to find any of the words:inurl:pizza OR inurl:beer

Words can be blocked from the text of results by preceding themwith the sign:inurl:cook -intext:county

#28: List of words in a URL

Allinurl: will search for a series of words in the URL of a page:allinurl:pizza beer wine

Allinurl: will also accept a phrase in quotes, if you need all thewords to be together:allinurl:book shop

Even though the words in quotes must be next to each other in theURL, they can be separated by punctuation, such as a dash,period, or + sign, all of which are commonly used in URLs to makethe individual words more readable.

#29: Searching inbound link text

All of the queries we have seen so far are based on the contents ofonline pages. You can also find items by looking for keywords inlinks on other pages. There are two parts to a link, the URL it ispointing to, and the text that you click on, which is called an anchor.Inanchor: finds pages that have been linked to with specifickeywords:inanchor:pizza

To be clear, if a page on the NY Times website links to a restaurantsite and uses the word pizza in the text of the link, inanchor:pizzawill show you the restaurants page, not the page on the NY Timessite.

Inanchor: is especially useful for Google Alerts, because it will tellyou whenever a new link to a page is published, even if the pagebeing linked to has already been online for a long time.


13/21


#30: Multiple words in inbound link text

If you want to find multiple words in the link anchor, you can useinanchor: for each word:

inanchor:pizza inanchor:beer

If you separate the inanchor: keywords with spaces, all of themmust be in the anchor text. OR can be used instead to find any ofthe words:inanchor:pizza OR inanchor:beer

Words can be blocked from the anchor text by preceding them withthe sign:inanchor:pizza -inanchor:dominos

#31: List of words in inbound link text

Allinanchor: is a shortcut that will search for a series of words inthe anchor text:allinanchor:pizza beer wine

Allinanchor: will also accept a phrase in quotes, if you need all thewords to be together:allinanchor:book shop

#32: Searching for outbound links

Links have two ends. The page that contains the link is the source,and the page being linked to is the target. Link: lets you findsources of links to a specific target:link:techcrunch.com

This search will find pages that contain links to techcrunch.com. Italso finds links to www.techcrunch.com. This type of alert is agreat way to keep track of anyone linking to one of your sites orcompeting sites.

You dont have to include http:// at the beginning of the URL, but itwill also work if you do.If you search for a domain name, it will findlinks to any page on that site. If you narrow down the URL to aspecific page, you will only find pages that link to that specific URL.


14/21


For example, link:techcrunch.com finds links to any page on theTechcrunch.com site, but link:www.techcrunch.com/about-techcrunch only finds pages that have links to this about page.

#33: Searching for URLs anywhere in a page

Link: only shows you pages that have a URL in a hyperlink. Youmight also want to find pages that mention a URL without using it ina link. If you use a URL in an alert, you will find items that containthe part of the URL before the first period. A search for pizza.com,will find pages that just have the word pizza. To find the exact URL,you must put it in quotes:pizza.com

This restriction is not necessary when you use intitle: or intext:. Youcan search for intitle:pizza.com or intext:pizza.com without using

quotes, and you will find matches for the full URL.

#34: Searching for URLs in blogs

Alerts for bogs have their own problem when searching for URLs.Google automatically converts a blog search for a URL into a link:search. An alert for pizza.com ends up being treated aslink:pizza.com. The solution is again to use quotes around theURL:pizza.com

#35: Searching within a single site

A URL can be used with the site: operator to only search pages ona specific site. If you use site: with a URL as the entire search, youwill receive alerts whenever a new page is added to that site:site:techcrunch.com

You can also search for pages on a site with additional keywords,so you will only see alerts if the site publishes a page containingthose words:google site:techcrunch.com

Multiple words can be used with OR to see pages on that site withany of the search terms:(google OR apple) site:techcrunch.com


15/21


#36: Searching within the URL on a single site

Site: can be used with a URL that includes a subdirectory:site:techcrunch.com/layoff

This will only find pages that are in that specific subdirectory. If youwant to find any page on a site that contains a keyword in the URL,you should combine site: and inurl: in the same query:site:techcrunch.com inurl:layoff

This finds any page on techcrunch.com with the word layoffanywhere in the URL.

#37: Searching within multiple sites

If you want to search multiple sites, you cant use multiple copies of

site: in the same search:google site:techcrunch.com site:mashable.com

site:scripting.com

Google will interpret this as looking for a page that is on all the sitesat the same time. Since this is impossible, nothing is found. Youneed to combine site: with OR to search any number of sites at thesame time:google (site:techcrunch.com OR site:mashable.com

OR site:scripting.com)

#38: Searching top level domains

An important difference between inurl: and site: is that site: isintelligent about searching for top level domains. A top level domainor TLD is the last part of a URL, such as .com or .edu. If you createan alert with inurl:edu, it will find pages with edu anywhere in theURL, not just domain names ending in .edu. You need to usesite:edu, if you want to find pages only in educational domains:social media site:edu

#39: Searching specialized domainsSite: allows you to create alerts for more specialized domains. TheWikipedia list of top level domains contains some interestingchoices for use with site:, such as .museum for sites run bymuseums:picasso site:museum
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_top-level_domainshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_top-level_domains


16/21


17/21


This makes sure that you will only see new links to a site from othersites. If you just search for link:techcrunch.com, you will also findlinks from within techcrunch.com itself.

#44: Related sites

One of the more interesting search operators for Google Alerts isrelated:, which shows you sites that Google thinks are similar to aspecified URL:related:techcrunch.com

This will create alerts for new sites that have a similar linking andtext profile to techcrunch.com. This is a great alert to create fortracking new competitors. You can create a related: alert for yourown site, or one the URL of you major competitors. Youll benotified as soon as Google thinks that another site is similar.

#45: Summary of URL based searches

There are so many ways to create alerts based on URLs, I thoughtit would be useful to summarize them before we move on.

inurl: - Pages that contain a keyword in the URL.allinurl: - Pages that contain a series of keywords in the URL.link: - Pages that link to a specific URL.site: - Pages with a full domain name or just the top level domain.related: - Pages that Google thinks are similar to a specific URL.

#46: News alerts for a single location

Queries for news alerts can include a location: operator, which letsyou specify a city, country, or US state as the origin of the newsitem. You can create an alert with just a location:location:moscow

Or you can include keywords with the location:red sox location:ma

For US states, you can use the full name or the standard US postalabbreviation. For countries you can also use the full name or theabbreviation as found in the standard Internet top level domaincountry code.


18/21


#47: News alerts for cities

When creating an alert for a specific city, you should test the queryfirst with a Google search. The location: operator doesnt allow youto include a state or country along with the city name. This means

that Google has to make an assumption about which version of thatcity you mean. For example, location:boston find news stories inBoston, Massachusetts, but location:cambridge finds news fromCambridge, England. As a resident of Lexington, Mass., I find itdisturbing that Google thinks that location:lexington meansLexington, Kentucky.

When you want to use a city name with multiple words, you mustseparate the words with an underscore (_), and dont assume thatcommon city abbreviations will work. Location:la gives you newsfor Louisiana, so you must use location:los_angeles if you want

news from that city.

#48: Multiple locations arent allowed

The Google documentation doesnt say anything about this, butfrom my tests multiple uses of location: in a single search doesntseem to work. The standard Google syntax would imply that youcan search for location:ny OR location:ca, but when this is testedwith Google News, it only returns results from the state of NewYork. In each test Ive done, only the first location: seems to beused. Another way of seeing that multiple locations are ignored is

that the total count of possible results is the same for a singlelocation or multiple locations.

#49: News alerts for a singlesource

News alerts can be limited with the source: operator, which letsyou name the news provider. You can create an alert with asource: by itself to see all news from that provider:source:ha'aretz

Or you can include keywords with the source. Multiple words in thesources title must be separated with an underscore (_).:theater source:new_york_times

Just as with location:, using multiple copies of source: separatedwith OR is ignored, and only the first source: is used.


19/21


#50: Finding comments on Google Newsstories

Google News publishes comments from experts on some of itsnews stories., and you can request alerts for these comments byusing the special source of google_news:source:google_news

You can also combine this with keywords to see expert commentson specific subjects:obama source:google_news


20/21


Share this eBook

This eBook is distributed with a Creative Commons license toencourage you to share it freely. Email it to a friend. Post it on your

blog. Make copies for your clients. Give it to your boss.Try our product

The information in this eBook was collected while developing andtesting our Google Alerts add-on http://AlertRank.com. Our goal isto make the Google Alerts as useful as possible.

Subscribe to my blog

Youll find daily posts with more Google Alerts tips and techniqueson my blog. You can subscribe to the feed or get it as a daily email.

Free Google Alerts E-Course

If you found this ebook useful, you might also want to try out myfree 10-day email course. You can sign up to receive this course onmy blog.

Questions? Comments?Feedback?

Please let me know if you have any questions or comments on thematerial in this book. I love talking to people about how they areusing Google Alerts to increase their productivity.

Adam GreenMr. Google Alertshttp://alertrank.com/mrgooglealerts [email protected]
http://vibemetrix.com/http://www.alertrank.com/mrgooglealertshttp://feeds2.feedburner.com/mrgooglealertshttp://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify?uri=MrGoogleAlerts&loc=en_UShttp://www.alertrank.com/mrgooglealerts/e-course/http://alertrank.com/mrgooglealertsmailto:[email protected]:[email protected]://alertrank.com/mrgooglealertshttp://www.alertrank.com/mrgooglealerts/e-course/http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify?uri=MrGoogleAlerts&loc=en_UShttp://feeds2.feedburner.com/mrgooglealertshttp://www.alertrank.com/mrgooglealertshttp://vibemetrix.com/


21/21


google alerts power primer:

Documents