An Update for News Junkies - Google Unveils its News Alert Service

Google is finally offering news alerts. They have finally unveiled a beta release (last version before final release) of their Google News Alerts feature that will automatically search and deliver results from the very popular Google News database directly to you via email. For all you News junkies – time for a little “happy dance” – cue the music. This may finally fill the giant hole left in lives of news addicts with the recent demise of other popular news advisories and news alert services.

So, if you want to track how a company is doing on the stock exchange, get the latest on your favourite sports team or just about anything else making the news for that matter and you don’t want to search it out yourself, here’s the answer. Simply enter the news search terms you want to monitor (i.e. "Bali bombing," "Sydney swans"), supply your email address and follow the verification procedure. That's it!

If you are a type “A” personality, which means you need it – and you need it now! you can have the news zapped right at you from the very moment it is being reported or if you are a little more patient and need to unwind with the latest gossip in relax mode you can choose to get an update on a regular daily basis.

What exactly are News Alerts?

In this case News Alerts are emails that are automatically sent to you by Google whenever there is news about a given topic that is of interest to you. You just need to specify certain words that are likely to appear in articles about your topic of interest. Its then Google's job to seek them out on your behalf, and deliver the news to you, as it appears online. Alerts contain links to stories containing your alert keywords as relevant "snippets" of the stories.

The new service is all part of Google Labs, where the company develops new technology. Google will allow you to maintain up to 50 news alerts at a time.

Email news alert tools are in fact not new. Truth is Google is actually playing catch-up with Yahoo, Marketwatch.com, The New York Times, and many others who have offered these services for many years. It is just that Google has become such a popular source of information that many people want to get everything from the one place. An excellent source of these types of facilities can be found on Search Engine Watch's news search engines page, which provides links to some of these services and other news searching resources.

So, what sort of topics are going to make for interesting News Alerts?

Anything at all that you think is interesting can be a good subject for a News Alert. Many News Alerts are set up by those people who are interested in:

• Tracking and staying on top of a developing news story
• Keeping up to date or current on a competitor or industry
• Monitoring medical advances
• Getting the latest gossip on a celebrity or sports team
• Maybe interested in updates on the activities of Yak Fat or the term Plergb http://www.well.com/user/bubbles/Plergb.html

How frequently can I receive my News Alerts?

You're able to choose to have alerts delivered immediately (as the content enters the Google News database) or once a day.

The frequency with which your News Alerts arrive basically depends on two factors. Firstly how often you asked Google to check for new stories and secondly, how often Google discover the new stories to send you.

When you first setup your Google account you can choose to receive email alerts either once a day or as the news happens. The "once a day" option, will check for new stories once a day, meaning you get a maximum of one email per day. However by selecting to receive News Alerts "as it happens," Google checks the news for your subjects continuously throughout the day. If the topic is one that is the focus of a lot of news coverage, it’s possible to receive several or more News Alerts in a single day.

What if the information I want monitored is a bit more complicated than a simple word or term - can I still get alerts?

The advanced search page on Google News provides a number of solutions to fine tuning a search whereby unwanted results can be eliminated. You can incorporate these same techniques in your Google news alert settings by selecting the conditions you want on the Google News advanced search page, then clicking the "Google Search" button. When the results page appears, copy the text that appears in the search box on that page and paste it into the box on the Google News Alerts home page labeled "News search."

There's a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) for the News Alerts at http://www.google.com/help/faq_newsalerts.html and a Usenet discussion group at http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&group=google.public.labs.newsalerts

So how do I sign up to get my news updates?

Fairly simple really, the first thing you need to do is visit the Google News Alerts home page. Once you’re on this page, enter the topic(s) that you are interested in and the frequency at which you would like to receive your News Alerts - then of course you will need to enter your email address.

So that you know you are signed up, Google then sends you a confirmation email that contains a link back to their new system. To activate your News Alert, you click on a link in the confirmation email. Once you've confirmed your request by doing this, Google starts checking for news to send to you right away.

What if I change my email address and still want to get Google News Alerts? Or, what if get tired of the news alerts and don't want to receive any more mail in my Inbox?

Fortunately every Google News Alert you receive will contain instructions on how to stop receiving emails if you no longer want the service. At the bottom of every News Alert Email you receive will be a link - all you need do is simply click on that link and you'll be unsubscribed from that specific News Alert.

Further, News Alerts can be sent to any working email address. However, you'll have to recreate your topic settings because there's not currently a way to switch the email address to which your News Alerts are being sent.

Arthur Hissey
Computer Research & Technology
www.crt.net.au