My Month-long Google Products Experiment: Google Alerts
After having just watched Julie and Julia and updating my own blog I decided to endeavor my own adventure. I will take at least one new Google project each day that’s listed on http://www.google.com/intl/en/options/ and use it for the day to see how it benefits my life. I consider myself to be fairly impartial as there are some Google products I already use that I love and some I frankly can’t stand to use.
I am somewhat versed in the arts of software evaluation as I’ve spent the last 14 years of my life designing, developing, testing, debugging, documenting, evaluating the users experience and most importantly just using a lot of different software.
My first step is going to be simply choosing one of the products from the list, giving notes on my experience and trying to help make the products better.
Our first contestant is;
- Alerts Get email updates on the topics of your choice
I must admit that I have used Google Alerts a total of two times in my life that I can recall the most recently being when my cousin Mikey Aitken crashed and injured himself on his freestyle dirt-jumping bike. I wanted to get any information that was out there in the news in addition to what I was hearing from the family.
The form seems easy enough at first glance. I simply add the term that I want to monitor and it will send me email when Google finds it. Apparently I can filter the search to just watch either the news, blogs, the web, comprehensive, video and groups. The only thing that stood out for me on this was what is comprehensive? If I’m searching the web is not that a comprehensive list?
The next question puts me in a bit of a gray area, it asks “How often”? To which I ask how often what? Is this asking me how often I’d like to monitor my search terms, how often I want to search for them or how often I want to be notified? I guess in the end it doesn’t make a lot of difference, but it serves as a point of confusion that less technical people might struggle with.
Next I’m asked the Email Length. Again this is a bit foggy, what email are we talking about. I’m assuming it’s the one that will be sent to me when content is found. The options are up to 20 results or up to 50 results. At this point 20 or 50 seem like a lot and since I don’t have a sample of what the size might be I’m a bit mystified by the question. Again I don’t really care whether it’s 20 or 50, I just want results. Possibly after using the tool a great deal more I’ll have a better feel for what this is asking.
At this point the only thing wanting is the address where I’ll send the results and as I’m logged in it uses the one associated with my account.
Now I ask myself, what’s next. Suppose I want to monitor or change that alert, how do I do that? This is one of my pet peeves but possibly what others may love about Google products, but they seem to be a scattered collection of tools. I think currently I have three different Google accounts and find myself logging in and out to use different tools. It would be much more convenient to have a central location where I can admin or configure all these tools.
Now that I’ve discovered the Google Alerts administration tool it’s easy enough to add or change the alerts and I’m rather looking forward to receiving emails so I can see the end product. I’ve added on for my company Half Nut Development and another for something I think would get a lot more traffic, Golden Globes.
Overall I find the Google Alerts fairly useful but just wonder on their longevity as it seems like once the newness wares off it’s easy to forget that they are there. Stay tuned for more details on that.
It’s now the next morning and I’ve received my list of mailings for the day from Google Alerts and find them pretty useful. One thing I’ve recognized right off is that the search is no more or less intelligent than the standard Google Web Search. If I put in a more general term I’ll get more general results. This was made obvious when I realized that I had Alert results that had half and nut and development in them that had no relation to the term ‘Half Nut Development.”
I did like how they provided links within each message to Remove, Create or Manage my Google Alerts. Again this would be nice to have this centralized as part of my Google Mail or possibly Google has added it to the new Google Wave technology. I did a quick look through my Google Wave interface and didn’t see anything blatantly obvious that would lead me to think a Watch could be set. Either way I would want a way to keep these feeling a part of each other rather than separate unrelated web pages. Another possibility seems like Google could work with Toolbar and browser developers especially Chrome to implement a right-click option that would allow you to Alert on a certain selected word or phrase.
I did find the whole process very responsive as the results for my Half Nut Development Alert brought back an entry I had created the day before in my blog, the Half Nut Nutlog.
The Google Alerts also had me asking how could I use this as part of my Search Engine Optimization (SEO) efforts for a site? Would Google give more credit or link juice to sites that are results from Google Alerts as people have taken the time to create them and are more interested in the results compared to just a Google Search.
I’ll keep working with the Alerts and try new search methods and see how it goes. Typically I like to provide a grade on a web site or product to review it’s effectiveness and usability. I’ll continue to do this for the various Google Products I review.
Overall Grade: B+
Pros: Fast and effective
Cons: Loose integration with daily products make it forgettable.
Copyright © Half Nut Development 2006-2008 All Rights Reserved