Official Website: http://www.google.com/alerts
Google Alerts is a service you can use to track a particular search term. For example if you wanted to know any time that UVU appeared in the news, you could set up a Google Alert that would send you an email any time that UVU shows up in the news, or on a blog, or other new information source on the web.
This is an excelent tool for brand management whether personal or professional. You can set up alerts to inform you of any new iformation that is being disseminated about you, your business or even your competitors. Anything that you can search for you can also be alerted about.
Set up some alerts and try it out. As the alerts start filling your email inbox you can fine tune them to provide you with just the information that you are interested in.
I have a Google Alert set up for a general search on my name Brett Michaelis. I tend to get an email once a month or so about various different news papers that post the honor role or local sports where some by the first name Brett and someone else by the last name Michaelis appear in the same report. It hasn't proven terribly useful for me as a source of information. One thing I have been able to determine is that I am not showing up in the news. That is probably for the best.
Showing posts with label service. Show all posts
Showing posts with label service. Show all posts
Monday, May 11, 2009
Google Search
Official Site: http://google.com
The heart and soul of Google is search. It is the most basic service that Google offers. Most basic, that is, for people that want basic search. It can however provide much more powerful search capabilites for those individuals that care to learn some tips and tricks to the Google Search Engine.
One of the most common advanced features that I use is the "site:" search modifier. This modifier limits your search to the provided domain and any subdomains that might exist in the Google index.
Example: site:uvu.edu summer university
This will search any sites that exist in the Google index and end in uvu.edu. You can limit this search farther by using site:www.uvu.edu
Another tip that I use every time that I search isn't specific to Google, but I find it invaluable and will share here in hopes that others find to save them time as well. When I pull up a search page and I'm looking through the search results, I rarely know right away which result will contain the information that I am looking for. What I do is I briefly browse the list and while holding down the CTRL or COMMAND key I click on three or four of the links that look most promising. What this does is it leave my search results page unaltered and it opens up each link in a new tab withing my browser. Then I can click on each of the new tabs and scan for the information I need. If non of the pages contain the information I need, I close them and go right back to my original search page and repeat the process or refine my search. It is a simple trick, but it has saved me a great deal of time over the past several years.
The heart and soul of Google is search. It is the most basic service that Google offers. Most basic, that is, for people that want basic search. It can however provide much more powerful search capabilites for those individuals that care to learn some tips and tricks to the Google Search Engine.
One of the most common advanced features that I use is the "site:" search modifier. This modifier limits your search to the provided domain and any subdomains that might exist in the Google index.
Example: site:uvu.edu summer university
This will search any sites that exist in the Google index and end in uvu.edu. You can limit this search farther by using site:www.uvu.edu
Another tip that I use every time that I search isn't specific to Google, but I find it invaluable and will share here in hopes that others find to save them time as well. When I pull up a search page and I'm looking through the search results, I rarely know right away which result will contain the information that I am looking for. What I do is I briefly browse the list and while holding down the CTRL or COMMAND key I click on three or four of the links that look most promising. What this does is it leave my search results page unaltered and it opens up each link in a new tab withing my browser. Then I can click on each of the new tabs and scan for the information I need. If non of the pages contain the information I need, I close them and go right back to my original search page and repeat the process or refine my search. It is a simple trick, but it has saved me a great deal of time over the past several years.
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