How do I setup a Google Alert? - Mendoza College IT Knowledge Base

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How do I setup a Google Alert?

Last updated Sep 28, 2009 by Maria Weston (Q1079)

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Google offers a news alert system that is useful in monitoring the pulse of information on topics of direct relevance to you. At a minimum, many individuals simply monitor occurrences of their name, but the service can also be directed to monitor research themes, teaching topics, professional practice, ND Football recruiting, etc. The service is setup to e-mail you a page of relevant links at a preselected interval of time. Bing, Microsoft’s search engine, offers a similar service. Google allows you to setup alerts without having a Goggle Account, however, to edit the alerts you will need to have a login account. Bing does require you to have a Windows Live account to setup alerts.

Be careful in designing your search query to make sure that it is properly scoped. Google’s cheat sheet provides a few examples of parameters used to optimize your search. Of these, most important is to enclose a collection of words that label a topic in quotes. For example, if you have an alert for your name as Bill McDonald, you will get news about the hamburger chain, bills in congress, etc. (i.e., each individual word and its stems are returned). In this example, you should enter “Bill McDonald”. Also make use of the “-“ sign to exclude words from searches. One other item not mentioned in Google’s cheat sheet is the ability to narrow the search to a given file type. So if you’re looking for lectures on Business Ethics, you might try filetype:ppt business ethics.

The instructions below provide a step-by-step description of how to set up these alerts. If you have any remaining questions, please feel free to call us at the Help Desk (1-7896).

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In your web browser address bar type: http://www.google.com/alerts

In the Create a Google Alert box:

Enter your Search terms: i.e. – "Bill McDonald"

Choose your Search Type: (News, Web, Blogs, Comprehensive, Video or Groups)

Choose your notification frequency How Often: (as-it-happens, once a day, or once a week)

If you select "once a day," Google will check for new results once a day, which means you'll get a maximum of one email per day. If you choose the "as it happens," Google will check for new results continuously and send you an alert whenever we find a new result.

Once the Alert was created you will get the following screen

In Outlook (or OWA), you will receive an email message to Confirm your Google Alert. Click on the link under Verify this Google Alert Request.

After clicking on the link, you will be directed back to Google Alerts and will get the Google Alert Verified window in your browser