How to Get Google to Do Your Writing Research For You
I just discovered a simple way to have research sent directly to your e-mail inbox.
If you haven’t seen Google Alerts yet, you need to stop by. My writing friend Bev Clement tipped me off to this great idea.
If you’re working on an ebook or other long project, Google Alerts can help you simplify your research. It will also work for articles if you have a long lead time.
Google Alerts let you set up “alerts” that will send a you a message each day with URLs that feature your keyword. For example, I recently did a project on Raw Foods, so I set up a Google Alert for raw foods related terms. Each day I got a message from Google with a list of blogs, websites and public forum posts that mentioned raw foods.
Instead of spending time wading through Google search results, my results were sent straight to my inbox.
Another tip that Bev had, that I’ve found really helpful, is to set up a Google Alert with your name. This way if someone mentions you in a forum, or if there is a link to your website or blog, then you know immediately.
One thing I’ve learned is that if you have a multi-word phrases you need to type your keyword like this:
Courtney+Ramirez
That way, your search is more specific.
I use the “comprehensive” search setting, but you can localize your search to groups, forums, blogs or news. If you don’t like getting the alerts each day, then you can set it up to deliver weekly
Courtney,
Great post on Google Alerts! Though I’ve written a few posts at Writer’s Notes about Google Alerts, using them for research was one idea I hadn’t thought of.
Wanted to mention that another way of setting up multiple-word alerts is to simply put the phrase in quotation marks, as you would when doing a Google search. That’s the way I do it, and it works fine. It’s also probably a bit easier than having to type a plus sign after nearly every word in your search string. (Some of the phrases I use for my alerts are rather long.) It’s interesting to know that there’s another way to do it, though, as I hadn’t been aware that you could use the plus sign as an alternative to quotation marks. For shorter phrases, it’s probably just as convenient.
I use “comprehensive” “as-it-happens” alerts so I’ll be notified as soon as the Googlebot discovers any of my work anywhere on the internet.
Thanks for a helpful post!
Jeanne
Thanks for the tip Jeanne! I hadn’t thought about trying quotes around the phrase…that makes a lot of sense.
I tried to post a comment at your blog, but I’m not sure if it worked right. It wanted me to register for orble and then jump through a few hoops. At the end, it just ended up listing my post as anonymous.
Sorry about that Courtney (or should I say “courtknee”)! Though it listed you as “Anonymous,” it did contain a live link to your blog, so I knew it was you. To be honest, I’m not really sure about the ins and outs of non-members leaving comments at Orble, but I apologize for any trouble you had! I’m hoping that, in the near future, they’ll make commenting a little easier for non Orble members. We’d probably get a lot more comments if they did!
Thanks for leaving a comment anyway!
Jeanne