Many of us rely heavily on search engines such as Google and Yahoo for content on our blogs We search through their databases using keywords, scrolling through long pages of seemingly endless search results just to get something new and fresh to talk about. Thankfully, Google has heard our grunts and groans with every click of the next button which is why they made a little tool that would make content-fishing easier.

Google Alerts is not entirely a new tool but I know that a lot of people are not yet aware of it and what it is capable of doing.

Google Alerts are emails automatically sent to you when there are new Google results for your search terms. We currently offer alerts with results from News, Web, Blogs, and Groups.

Instead of searching through Google everyday for topics that you need on your blog, Google makes things easier for you by sending the news searches to you on a timely basis! This is a great help for blogs who are always on the lookout for fresh and up-to-date content for their blogs. Here in Pinoy Blogero, I make use of Google Alerts for me to be up-to-date on the latest news about the Pinoy blogosphere.

As you can see on the form of Google Alerts above, all you have to do is to specify the keywords that you want Google to search for you. You could also specify the type of alert that you want (News, Web , Blogs , Groups, and Comprehensive Alerts) and how often you want it to be sent to your e-mail.

• A ‘News’ alert is an email aggregate of the latest news articles that contain the search terms of your choice and appear in the top ten results of your Google News search.
• A ‘Web’ alert is an email aggregate of the latest web pages that contain the search terms of your choice and appear in the top twenty results of your Google Web search.
• A ‘Blogs’ alert is an email aggregate of the latest blog posts that contain the search terms of your choice and appear in the top ten results of your Google Blog search.
• A ‘Groups’ alert is an email aggregate of new posts that contain the search terms of your choice and appear in the top fifty results of your Google Groups search.
• A ‘Comprehensive’ alert is an aggregate of the latest results from multiple sources into a single email to provide maximum coverage on the topic of your choice.

This tool is different from RSS feeds. RSS feeds sends you fresh and new content of those blogs you have subscribed to. Google Alerts, on the other hand, sends you fresh and new content from sources that has the keyword you are looking for.

Let us say someone made a new blog post that has the keyword “Pinoy Blogging” on one of its lines. Once that blog post has been published, those who have subscribed to Google Alerts who are looking for the keyword “Pinoy Blogging” will receive an e-mail about the mentioned blog post.

Really helpful, right? Make other Alerts for other keywords (Pinoy Blogs, Pinoy, Blogging, Pinoy Blogosphere) and you’ll never run out of sources.

For more information about this cool Google feature, visit their FAQs page.

Hope this quick blog tip helps! Happy Blogging!

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