The free Google Alerts service scans websites, news services, blogs and online books and documents for updates on your selected topics and subjects. Use Google Alerts as your own online personal research assistant by configuring the tool to find online content for the subjects that you want to research. Once you’ve entered relevant keywords into the Google Alerts search input field, the tool sends links to matching content to your preferred email address.
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Go to Google.com/alerts.
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Type keywords and phrases relevant to your research topic into the search input field at the top of the page. To return only results that include specific words or phrases, place the words in quotation marks. For multiple keywords and phrases, insert a “+” symbol or the word “AND” between each keyword and phrase.
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Click the “Type” button to select the type of content that you want Google Alerts to search. By default, Google Alert searches all online content, but you can narrow search results to specific content type by selecting your preferred option from the drop-down list. You can select news, blogs, video, discussions or books. For an academic research project, you might want to choose “books,” and for a social study you might select “discussions” or “blogs.”
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Select how often you want to receive email updates from the “How Often” drop-down list. You can select daily emails, weekly emails or “As It Happens” if you want an email update as soon as Google Alerts finds relevant content.
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Click the “Volume” button to control how much content Google Alerts returns. Select “All Content” to receive every item or “Only the Best results” for the most relevant content.
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Type your email address into the “Your Email” input field. If you’re signed in to your Google account, Google Alerts will auto-fill this field with your registered email address. You can leave this email address in place or enter a new email address.
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Click the red “Create Alert” button to activate the service.
