Google is the dominant search engine currently, and it offers many search-associated tools. Becoming well-acquainted with these can save you time and improve your results.

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What IS a Google Alert?

Google Alerts will send you e-mail when new entries (or even a single entry) are added to the top 10 to 50 search results (depending on the category of Alert) for the specific search term you ask Google to monitor. Currently, Google provides 6 different Alert capabilities, described below, and you'll probably find a need for all of them at some point.

What will a Google Alert do for you?

Businesses use Google Alerts to track competitors, potential customers, trademarks, copyrighted material, and many other things. Job seekers can find many uses also.

• What's "out there" about you that a potential employer might find? Hopefully, you know what's there now. Set up Google Alerts for your name (with and without your middle initial), and Google will let you know about new items that show up in the top search results on your name.
  
  
• Interested in a specific employer?
  
  Set up a Comprehensive Google Alert for that employer by name, and Google will let you know about new items in the top search results for that company.
  
  Set up an News Alert with the employer name and "+layoff" (without the quotes and no space after the + sign) as the search term, as in "Verizon +layoff"
  
  Set up an News Alert with the employer name and "+bankruptcy" (without the quotes and, again, no space after the + sign), as in "AIG +bankruptcy"
  
  
• Interested in a specific industry? Set up a Google Alert for the industry, and Google will let you know about new items in the top search results for the industry.
  
  
• Wonder what your college roommate, a former colleague, current or former boss, etc. are up to? Set up a Google Alert for each of those names, and Google will let you know about new items that appear for them in the top search results.

You get the idea. Track whatever is important to your job search and to your reputation.

Using Google Alert information:

Use that information provided by Google Alerts in a way that will help you to stay up to date with your industry or profession, expand or help you reconnect with members of your network, or further your job search in some way. For example, you could:

• Impress an interviewer with how up to date you are on company/industry/professional news.
  
  
• Increase your research efforts if you find something unsettling in the search results about a potential employer - rumors of bankruptcy, recent layoffs announced, profits and/or revenue down, CEO or CFO resigned, etc.
  
  
• Reconnect with members of your network by sending a congratulatory note if something good hits the news, share good news about a mutual acquaintance, or (possibly!) commiserate on bad news.
  
  
• Respond (carefully!) to negative things about you that may appear.

Creating a Google Alert:

Start out with a "baseline" of current information on the topics you will be using for your Alerts. Before you set up your Alerts, run searches using those terms to see what Google thinks is most important now. This is a good way to test how well your search criteria will work as Alerts, too.

Then, sign up by visiting the Google Alerts home page. You may want to establish a Google Account to have several Alerts running simultaneously, and that account will also enable you to have a Gmail account, iGoogle, and other useful Google tools. It is not required, however, to set up a single Alert.

For each topic you wish to track:

1. Input your search term in the "Search terms" box, e.g. your name if that's a search you want to set up.
   
   
2. Select your Alert "Type" -

   Google provides Alerts for 6 categories of search results:

   1. “Comprehensive” is the default, and it searches new entries in News, Blogs, and the Web, for your search term.
      
      
   2. “News” searches through only the latest articles in Google News for your search term, and returns new additions to the top 10 results.
      
      
   3. “Blogs” searches only through the latest blog posts for your search term, and returns new additions to the top 10 results.
      
      
   4. “Web” searches the latest Web pages added to Google containing your search terms, and returns new additions to the top 20 results.
      
      
   5. "Video" searches the latest videos added for your search term and returns the new additions to the top 10 results.
      
      
   6. “Groups” searches the latest entries added to Google Groups for your search term, and returns new additions to the top 50 results.
      
      
      
3. Then, select “How often” to receive your results -
   
   
   • “Once a day” – my personal favorite, means you will get one message per day, at most, for that specific Alert.
     
     
   • “As it happens” – sends a message whenever new results for that specific Alert appear. This can get overwhelming for really active searches.
     
     If the topic is fast changing or if you must be on top of it ASAP (like an Alert on your name or a company you are interviewing with soon), this would be your best option.
     
     
   • “Once a week” – for topics that aren't very urgent.

What a Google Alert will not do for you:

Don't assume that a Google Alert is going to let you know about EVERYTHING on the Web about a specific topic because you won't have the time to personally review each entry in the search results (when was the last time you did a search that returned fewer than 1,000 search results?). It will only let you know about specific things within the specific parameters described above.

A different thing - GoogleAlert.com

This is a paid service, not part of Google, which will do "deep monitoring" of the search terms you select, penetrating much more deeply into the search results than the free Alerts from Google itself. For example, if you have trademarks to protect or need more comprehensive monitoring (greater than the top 50 search results examined by Google), this service may be appropriate.

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About the author...

Online job search expert Susan P. Joyce has been observing the online job search world and teaching online job search skills since 1995. Susan is a two-time layoff "graduate" who has worked in human resources at Harvard University and in a compensation consulting firm. In 1998, her company, NETability, Inc. purchased Job-Hunt.org, and Susan has been editor and publisher of Job-Hunt since then. Follow Susan on Twitter at @jobhuntorg.

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