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10.21.2010

Book Blogging 101 - Google Alerts





Spawned from the Big Sis, Little Blog program, Book Blogging 101 was born. Do you have a question? Leave it in the comments section or email me parajunkee at gmail dot com


Q: What is Google Alerts?
www.google.com/alerts


wiki:

The Google Alerts is a content monitoring service, offered by the search engine company Google, that automatically notifies users when new content from news, web, blogs, video and/or discussion groups matches a set of search terms selected by the user and stored by the Google Alerts service. Notifications can be sent by email, as a web feed or displayed on the users iGoogle page.
Google Alerts only provides content from Google's own search engine.

Currently there are six types of alerts sent when new content matches the search terms of the alert:
    ▪    Everything - (default setting) aggregates News, Web and Blogs
    ▪    News - sent when matching content makes it into the top ten results of a Google News search
    ▪    Web - sent when new web pages appear in the top twenty results for a Google Web search
    ▪    Blogs - sent when matching content appears in the top ten results of a Google Blog Search
    ▪    Video - sent when matching content appears in the top ten results of a Google video search
    ▪    Groups - sent when matching content appears in the top fifty results of a Google Groups search

What would I use the Google Alerts for?

You would monitor your online alias, your blog name, your real name, books you like, genres you follow.

My alerts that revolve around me are “Parajunkee” “Parajunkee’s View”  “Parajunkie”

The question really is why? Am I that self-centered that I need to know who is talking about me?

Yep. I want to know who is talking about me. I want to know if I won a contest I entered, or if someone loads me on their blog roll, or if someone is REPOSTING my reviews. Which is a big one. Content stealing happens a lot and if you have a piece of information on your blog that you don’t want people to “take”, put that section of your blog into an alert so you can be notified if someone reposts it.

TRACK KEYWORDS
Now...another way to use the ALERTS are to use them to track key words. “Urban Fantasy” “Paranormal Romance” “Twilight” are examples of keywords you can use to track what is happening in these worlds. This is a great fodder for your blog...especially if you want to keep up on trends.


Now once you have signed up for these fancy alerts, what happens. Well depending on the settings, you'll get an email that day.

Ok...skipped a part, didn't I. Lets go back to the settings. When you go to the page:  http://www.google.com/alerts it looks like this.

 It is pretty self explanatory. Type your search term, just like you would if you typed a query in Google. Type in your alias to start...i.e. PARAJUNKEE.

The first setting is what type. News, Blogs, etc. I click EVERYTHING.

Then HOW OFTEN - pretty self-explanatory right. Alias you might want to do immediately, keywords, you probably want a daily digest.

The next setting is the VOLUME of searches you want it to find, do you want it to give you everything, every mention, whisper, fizzle...meaning if you are on someone's blogroll is will show up EVERY time they post or do you just want the BEST. Hmmm. Now define google's best? That is hard to judge, I really want everything. What if google's best is my worst, eh?

Then pick your email for delivery and hit CREATE ALERT.

Voila.







Ask your BB101 Questions here...

9 comments:

Sophie said...

I had several alerts going that were delivered daily, but it was just one more thing to keep up with and get through in my email so I cancelled a lot of them.

Angela Tolsma said...

oh I had no idea about this! Thanks for sharing it

Anonymous said...

I used to use this all the time but never thought about using it for the blog. What a great reminder of how easy the alerts are to use. Great post today!

ParaJunkee said...

Thanks guys!

Missie, The Unread Reader said...

I remember the first time you informed us about alerts! I've been using them ever since and find them most helpful, but I have noticed it doesn't pick up everything, so I probably have to go revise my settings. Thanks so much for elaborating.

I'm just curious, but what should you do if you do find that someone has stolen your content. Can you really make them pull it off their site?

ParaJunkee said...

@Missie - first I would contact them and confront them on a personal note. If they still do not refuse them, you can get a lawyer to send a cease and desist letter. This usually works.

Anonymous said...

I've never even realized we could do this. Where have I been?!?! Thanks for the info!


Stephanie G
Paranormal Haven

Jennifer said...

How exactly do you set the alert to see if somebody is taking content?

Twimom227 said...

Thanks! I'm with Missie... I signed up for Alerts back when you told us about it before and I have to say, I don't think it's working. I can think of several examples when I've won something on a blog and the alert never catches it. I do see my own posts, but never anyone elses. And once and a random while, there will be a twitter tweet that shows up. I was thinking about dumping it all together b/c Iike "Wisdom" (at top), it's becoming just another email. Any suggestions on why it's not working? I've tried variations like twimom227, Twimom227, @twimom227, and then put those in quotes. Oh well!

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