Google search is used extensively by everyone for almost anything. Some trivial examples include Search for a book, research company news, look up a person. Now, it would be good if there was a way to receive the Google Search results via email rather than having to search for them. Well, there is such a way. The service is called Google Alerts available at http://www.google.com/alerts
Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic.
Enter the topic you wish to monitor, then click preview to see the type of results you’ll receive. Some handy uses of Google Alerts include:
- monitoring a developing news story
- keeping current on a competitor or industry
- keeping tabs on stocks of companies you own or want to research.
To try it out, goto http://www.google.com/alerts
- Type in search terms ( say Gamestop )
- Select the source of results (News, Blogs, Video, Discussions or everything)
- Select frequency ( as it happens, once a day, once a week)
- Number of results ( 20 or 50)
- Email address to get the alert
I find this especially useful to keep up with the companies I own and am researching further. I have set my alerts to daily and every day I get an email that contains links to some news stories about the company. Some of it is repetitive stuff, however there are times I find interesting stuff that I was not aware of.
Google Alerts is another good service from Google. In my previous articles, I demonstrated the use of Google Docs to create a spreadsheet to track your portfolio and watch list stocks.
