What is Google Alerts and How to use it?

Everybody wants to get updated first. I think you also want to get notified when something new happened. You have your own field of interest and you think of knowing everything of your interest.

But you are still confused about where to go for that latest news those you want to read. You search something on google and find results of the very past. You wish you could have found that piece of news earlier.

Don’t worry, Google has a service for that particular problem and its name is Google Alerts. Google Alerts is a change detection and notification service that was created in 2003.

If you have a google account and want to stay updated with the topic of your interest or the search items about which you want to stay updated, then adding your topics and search items in google alerts and it will email you whenever it finds something latest about your interesting topics on any websites, blogs wherever it finds.

So let’s dig into Google Alerts.

Homepage of Google Alerts

When you first open the google alerts page, it shows you something like this. A picture has been given below for a better understanding of the home page of Google Alerts.

There are many types of alert suggestions categories from which you can select and add to your alert list. You can also add your name keyword, as in my case Jeetendroid, to your alerts list. Whenever someone searches your name keyword, you can be notified. In this way, you can track how much your name is famous on the internet.

There are various predefined topics to add to your list such as companies, finance, music, movies, politics, sports, technology, tv, health, news sections, programming, etc..

Under the major topics, you can find their items like in company you can have Google, Salesforce and many more. You can also add your desired company name to follow what latest is happening there.

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How to use Google Alerts

In the search box, you may type what you want to follow or get the latest news about. For example, if I want to stay updated and get an email about Smartphones, then searching “smartphone” in the search box I will have the following preview.

As you can see smartphone keyword related news and articles are shown. Those are brought from different famous websites and blogs and are the latest.

If you want to create an alert for the smartphone then just click create an alert button placed under the search box. Anything new or latest about smartphones on the internet will be emailed to you.

If you want to be more specific about the time of the notification email, source from where it will come, language of news, region from where it will come and how many times they will come then options are also available. Just click Show Options besides create an alert button. You can also change your email id to which all the notification emails will come.

How often you want to get notified

For example, if you want to get an email whenever something new article is found in your interest then you can choose the option As-it-happens as shown below.

There are other options like At most once a day and at most once a week. Choose the option that is most suitable for you.

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Select the source

You can also choose the source from which you want to get the latest news. There are many options like News, Blogs, Web, Videos, Books, Discussions, Finance. Choose the source you want from.

Select the Language

There are different types of blogs and websites on the internet in a different language. So you need to choose your preferred language. It is English by default. But if you want to get your news on certain specific language then you can choose that from language option as shown below.

Select the Region

Now select the region from which you want to get the news. If you choose Any Region then it will notify you wherever the news happens. If you want to be specific about the region then choose your preferred region from the options.

How many results you want to be notified

If you think you will be irritated when a bulk amount of news or notification comes to your phone, then you can choose from the How many options to set it to Only the best results or if you are not so then you can choose All results.

You can also change the email address to which you want to be notified about the latest news. In the Deliver to option enter your desired email.

Finally, click on Create Alert. You will see your topics in my alerts section as shown below.

There is a more advanced option that you can try for. Just click the setting icon in My alerts section and you have options like Delivery Time and Digest. If you want to receive emails at a specific time of the day then check the tick of Delivery Time and choose the time of the day. 

And if you want to receive all your alerts in a single email then there is an option also. Check the Digest option and choose how often you want to receive emails. Click on Save and that’s it.

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