As part of my job, I need to keep track of the latest Bitcoin news. Is there an easy way to set up a Google Alert to do just that for me?
Google Alert is exactly the tool you want, and it’s surprising that people don’t use it more to tap into the power of Google search and the fact that it has access to thousands of newspapers and news wires, along with zillions of other Web pages, blogs, etc. Even better, it’s pretty darn easy to set up a Google Alert for what you seek, whether it’s news about dogs doing heroic things, cute kid stories, or Bitcoin.
Let’s make this a bit more interesting, however: Instead of just searching for Bitcoin stories, let’s set up a Google Alert for bitcoin scams and see what shows up! One key feature that you want to keep in mind is that if you start getting false hits, you can always modify the search pattern with stop words (like “-miami” to get rid of stories that also mention Miami) at any point. It’s often necessary to refine your search after a few days, for sure!
To start, head over to the Google Alerts page. Here’s what I see:
Notice that offers suggestions for alerts, which highlight that if you track a specific stock or company – perhaps your employer! – it’s easy to set that up too. But, no, let’s create one. That’s done by simply typing in the word or phrase you want into the box “Create an alert about…”.
It’ll actually immediately fetch matching stories so you can see if you need additional refinement:
If there are common synonyms you can try (a|b) notation too, so maybe “(bitcoin|cybercurrency)” to expand your net a bit. The language of alerts is quite sophisticated and it’s not a bad idea to do some homework to create the perfect alert if you’re so inclined.
Definitely click on “Show options” to fine tune the kind of results you’ll see too:
All worth exploring, but I particularly suggest you pay attention to how often you want reports and what sources Google Alerts should analyze for your results.
Once it’s created through clicking or tapping “Create Alert“, you’ll see this on the Alerts home page:
At any point you can click on the trash bin to delete the alert or the pencil icon to edit it. Here’s what I ended up with as my Bitcoin scam alert, by the way:
Pretty cool stuff, eh? Now, go and produce a bunch of good alerts so you can keep up on the news!
thanks