Applauding Google - Tips #1

How You and/or Your Site can use Google to Your Advantage - Tip #1

DON'T spend insane amounts of time trying to find specific information on the web.

Tip #1: Google Alerts

I had a friend ask me how to find horse blogs. After much discussion about the endless hours she spends trying to find  stuff, I suggested she use Google Alerts. She tried it, used the words  'Horse Blogs' and every day she has oodles of great sites to sift through without the endless searching. Google does it all for her.

Type in google.com/alerts. On this page you can type in the topic you wish to find, such as ‘horse trainers’, or ‘horseman’, ‘english riding’ or ‘horse jumping’. Just typing ‘jumping’ won’t work, as you will get a stream of gymnastics pages. You need to be descriptive enough for the search engines to pick up on your specialty.

Next, define your search under ‘Type’ for blogs, news, web, video, groups and comprehensive (covering everything). If you’re only looking for video, this will keep your searches accurate. There’s no sense in sifting through sites you don’t need. The point of this exercise is to eliminate that.

Then you can get this information on a daily, weekly or ‘as it happens’ basis. I get daily as it’s just too much to always recheck your email using the other two options. However, if you have news-based requirements, then ‘as it happens’ is the most valuable.

Just add your email address, click ‘create alert’ and you’re on your way.

I have a variety set up and I have created most of my information banks this way. It has cut down my search time to about 1/10th of the time, AND I get accurate data.

In business, this is a valuable tool, and Google is the leader of Search Engines.