Google Alerts Power Primer:

50 Tips, Techniques & Workarounds

By Adam Green
“Mr. Google Alerts”
AlertRank.com
Google Alerts Power Primer Page 2 of 21

© 2009 by Adam Green

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About the Author

Adam Green is the CEO of AlertRank.com, an online blog
relationship management application. He blogs at
AlertRank.com/MrGoogleAlerts. Please feel free to contact Adam
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His email address is Adam@AlertRank.com.

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Google Alerts Power Primer Page 3 of 21

Google Alerts setup

You don’t have to use a Google email address or even have a
Google account to use Google Alerts. You can just type your
search terms as you would for a normal Google search, enter an
email address to receive the alerts, and click Create Alert. You can
create up to 1,000 alerts in this way for a single email address.

Google will send you a verification email with a link that you need to
click to have the alerts start. This prevents someone from directing
alerts to you without your approval.

The default type of alert is Comprehensive, which covers 5 different

Google search services. You can choose a specific source, such as
news.

You can also specify the frequency of email delivery. The default is
once a day, but if you want to be able to respond quickly to
mentions of something like your company’s name, you can have
the alert sent as soon as Google finds it. For less time-critical
searches, you can select once a week emails.
Google Alerts Power Primer Page 4 of 21

If you create alerts while logged into a Google account, they will be
collected into a single page that lets you manage them.

From this page you can edit the query, or change the alert source
and frequency. You can also create new alerts and delete existing
alerts. One convenience of creating alerts while logged in is that
Google won’t send you emails to verify each new alert.

Google Alerts never gives you an error message when you create a
new alert. It just accepts your query, even if it makes no sense. So
you should test all your alert queries with a normal Google search
first. This will let you see if you are likely to find the type of items
that you’d expect. It will also tell you if anything can be found.

It’s easy to be overwhelmed if you create lots of alerts. One way of

coping with this is to create a separate Gmail account just for your
alerts. If you are an active Google Alerts user, you should try out
AlertRank, our Google Alerts add-on. It has many features that
make it easier to manage large numbers of alerts.
Google Alerts Power Primer Page 5 of 21

#1: Single word search

The simplest alert is based on a single word:
book

Google looks for this word, and common variants, such as plurals.
Looking for book will also find books.The automatic search for
variations is called stemming. A common example of stemming is
adding ing to verbs, so searching for swim will also find
swimming.

#2: Single word without stemming

You can turn off stemming by preceding a word with the + sign:
+book

This will only find book, but not books or booking. The + sign
must be placed before a word without any spaces in between.
Turning off stemming is useful when searching for brand names,
since it makes sure you only see mentions of the exact word you
are looking for.

#3: Turning off stemming with quotes

Another way of finding exact matches without stemming is to
surround it with quotes:
“book”

#4: Multiple word search

An alert with multiple words will search for items that contain all of
these words:
book shop

Google will apply stemming to each of these words, and will find the
words in any order. The words don’t have to be next to each other.
In this example, book and shop can be anywhere in the found
item.

Google will also look for combinations of these words.

Combinations can result in different results, depending on the word
order in the alert. For example, an alert for book shop will also find
bookshop. An alert for shop book won’t find bookshop, but it will
find book shop.
Google Alerts Power Primer Page 6 of 21

#5: Multiple words without stemming

You can turn off stemming in a multiple word alert by using the +
sign with each word:
+book +shop

This will keep variations like book shopping from being found. It
will also block word combinations, so bookshop won’t be found
either. You can apply the + sign to one or more of the words in the
alert, such as book +shop to block book shopping from being
found.

#6: AND is ignored

Some search engines allow you to combine search words with AND
as a way of specifying that all the words must be found. Google
ignores AND in alerts, since it already assumes that all the words
you enter must be found. In effect a space between words is used
as an and by Google. Database people call this an implcit and. An
alert for pizza beer means a search for both pizza and beer.

#7: Finding any of the search terms

The common alternative to AND is OR, which means that items
with any of the words should be found. OR is recognized by
Google:
pizza OR beer

This will find either word in the results. You can combine several
words with OR, such as pizza OR beer OR burgers, to find any of
these words. The OR must be in upper case. Using or instead will
be ignored by Google.

#8: Alternative for OR

A more geeky way of specifying an OR search is the | character,
which is commonly called a bar:
pizza | beer

This will find the same items as pizza OR beer.

Google Alerts Power Primer Page 7 of 21

#9: Grouping search words

You can group a series of words separated with OR by surrounding
them with parenthesis. For example:
pizza (beer OR wine)

This results in a search for pizza and beer, or pizza and wine. The
same search can also be written as pizza (beer | wine).

#10: Searching for phrases

You can search for an exact phrase by putting the words in quotes:
“book shop”

This will only find items where the words are next to each other, in
the same order as in the search phrase, and without any stemming.
It will also prevent your finding combinations of the words as a
single world. In this example, bookshop won’t be found. If you are
looking for a product or company name that contains multiple
words, it is best to put the words in quotes.

#11: Finding stop words

Google ignores extremely common words, especially words of only
a few characters, such as the and if. These are called stop words.
For example, if you search for book in a month, you are going to
find matches for just book and month.

There are two solutions for this problem. If you want your search to
include stop words, but don’t care about the order, or whether they
are next to each other, you can put a + sign in front of the stop
word. This basically means that the word must be included:
book +in +a month

If you want all the words to be found as a complete phrase, you can
put them all in quotes:
“book in a month”
Google Alerts Power Primer Page 8 of 21

#12: Blocking words

The opposite of a + sign in front a word is the - sign:
book month -of

This means that you don’t want to see results that include this
word. This example will let you find results for book and month,
but will weed out all the matches for book of the month.

#13: Finding related words

Placing a tilde (~) in front of a word will find items that contain
related words as well:
~food

Searching for ~food also finds matches for cook, cuisine,

nutrition, restaurant, and recipe. This is based on Google’s
awareness of common synonyms, so it makes an interesting way of
broadening a search to find common groups of words. It also
provides insights into what Google thinks are popular usage
patterns.

For example, Google thinks that new is a synonym of cool, but not
vice-versa. If you search for ~cool, you will also get matches for
new, but searching for ~new doesn’t find cool. ~new does find
latest, however, and ~latest finds live and current.

#14: Searches are limited to 32 words

Not that you are likely to reach this limit, but it is good to know
exactly how many words you can enter in an alert.

#15: Searching for a range of numbers

You can specify a range of numbers by separating the starting and
ending numbers with two periods (..). The entire range must be
written with no spaces:
super bowl 1990..1999

This query will find all entries that mention Super Bowls from 1990
to 1999. Don’t be misled into thinking that Google is being smart
about dates. It is just looking for the numbers 1990 through 1999.
The number range will also work within quotes. If you create an
alert for “super bowl 1990..1999”, you will only see items where
the number follows immediately after the word bowl.
Google Alerts Power Primer Page 9 of 21

#16: Wildcard search

Sometimes you want to create an alert for a phrase, but you need
to see variations on some of the words. This can be done by
substituting the word that could change with an asterisk:
happily * after

This will show you all the variations of the common expression
happily ever after. What if you want to only see variations of this
phrase that don’t use the word ever? Easy, just add –ever at the
end:
happily * after -ever

#17: Searching in the page title

You can use intitle: as a way of narrowing down alerts to items that
contain keywords within the title of a Web page, blog post, group
message or news item:
intitle:pizza

There can’t be any spaces between intitle: and the keyword you
are searching for.

#18: Searching for multiple words in a title

If you want to find multiple words in a title, you can use intitle: for
each word:
intitle:pizza intitle:beer

If you separate the intitle: keywords with spaces, all of them must
be in the title. OR can be used instead to find any of the words:
intitle:pizza OR intitle:beer

Sometimes certain keywords dominate the results. These words

can be blocked from the titles of results by preceding them with the
– sign:
intitle:pizza -intitle:dominos

#19: List of words in a title

Instead of using intitle: with each word in a list, allintitle: is a
shortcut that will search for a series of words in the title:
allintitle:pizza beer wine
Google Alerts Power Primer Page 10 of 21

Allintitle: will also accept a phrase in quotes, if you need all the
words to be together, and want to turn off stemming:
allintitle:”book shop”

#20: Searching in page text

You can use intext: to narrow down alerts to items that contain
keywords within the text of a Web page, blog post, group message
or news item:
intext:pizza

There can’t be any spaces between intext: and the keyword you
are searching for.

#21: Multiple words in page text

If you want to find multiple words in the text area, you can use
intext: for each word:
intext:pizza intext:beer

If you separate the intext: keywords with spaces, all of them must
be in the text. OR can be used instead to find any of the words:
intext:pizza OR intext:beer

Words can be blocked from the text of results by preceding them

with the – sign:
intext:pizza -intext:dominos

#22: List of words in page text

Allintext: is a shortcut that will search for a series of words in the
text:
allintext:pizza beer wine

Allintext: will also accept a phrase in quotes, if you need all the
words to be together, and want to turn off stemming:
allintext:”book shop”

#23: Searching within a URL

Inurl: searches for keywords within a URL, which is one of the
most descriptive parts of a page:
inurl:library
Google Alerts Power Primer Page 11 of 21

Stemming is not used with inurl:. For example, searching for just
library will find libraries as well, but inurl:library doesn’t find
URLs that contain libraries. You have to use multiple searches
combined with OR, if you want to find multiple variations of a word:
Inurl:library OR inurl:libraries

#24: Matching complete words in a URL

Inurl: has an odd way of dealing with matching part of a URL. It will
find words that are part of a URL, but it won’t find parts of words.
This is easier to explain with a few examples.

If you set up an alert for inurl:cook, you will find URLs that contain
cook as part of a larger URL, such as cookmedical, or
cookcounty. If you try searching for inurl:coo, you won’t find
either of these URLs, but you will find coocooclub.

The basic rule seems to be that Google treats the characters you
put after inurl: as a complete word, and only finds matches for that
word.

#25: Searching for US state sites

State sites generally have URLs that use the state abbreviation
followed by either .gov, .org, or .us. You can set up an alert for
pages from a specific state with the pattern inurl:state.(gov OR
org OR us):
inurl:il.(gov OR org OR us)

This can be also be extended to search for multiple states:

inurl:(il OR ma).(gov OR org OR us)

#26: Searching for financial sites

An interesting trick for finding items from financial sites is to use
inurl: with a stock symbol:
inurl:goog

If you search for the stock symbol without inurl:, you will find lots of
items about that stock’s company, but generally the URL only
contains the symbol if it is a site focusing on financial issues.
Google Alerts Power Primer Page 12 of 21

#27: Searching for multiple words in a URL

If you want to find multiple words in a URL, you can use inurl: for
each word:
inurl:pizza inurl:beer

If you separate the inurl: keywords with spaces, all of them must
be in the text. OR can be used instead to find any of the words:
inurl:pizza OR inurl:beer

Words can be blocked from the text of results by preceding them

with the – sign:
inurl:cook -intext:county

#28: List of words in a URL

Allinurl: will search for a series of words in the URL of a page:
allinurl:pizza beer wine

Allinurl: will also accept a phrase in quotes, if you need all the
words to be together:
allinurl:”book shop”

Even though the words in quotes must be next to each other in the
URL, they can be separated by punctuation, such as a dash,
period, or + sign, all of which are commonly used in URLs to make
the individual words more readable.

#29: Searching inbound link text

All of the queries we have seen so far are based on the contents of
online pages. You can also find items by looking for keywords in
links on other pages. There are two parts to a link, the URL it is
pointing to, and the text that you click on, which is called an anchor.
Inanchor: finds pages that have been linked to with specific
keywords:
inanchor:pizza

To be clear, if a page on the NY Times website links to a restaurant

site and uses the word pizza in the text of the link, inanchor:pizza
will show you the restaurant’s page, not the page on the NY Times
site.

Inanchor: is especially useful for Google Alerts, because it will tell

you whenever a new link to a page is published, even if the page
being linked to has already been online for a long time.
Google Alerts Power Primer Page 13 of 21

#30: Multiple words in inbound link text

If you want to find multiple words in the link anchor, you can use
inanchor: for each word:
inanchor:pizza inanchor:beer

If you separate the inanchor: keywords with spaces, all of them

must be in the anchor text. OR can be used instead to find any of
the words:
inanchor:pizza OR inanchor:beer

Words can be blocked from the anchor text by preceding them with
the – sign:
inanchor:pizza -inanchor:dominos

#31: List of words in inbound link text

Allinanchor: is a shortcut that will search for a series of words in
the anchor text:
allinanchor:pizza beer wine

Allinanchor: will also accept a phrase in quotes, if you need all the
words to be together:
allinanchor:”book shop”

#32: Searching for outbound links

Links have two ends. The page that contains the link is the source,
and the page being linked to is the target. Link: lets you find
sources of links to a specific target:
link:techcrunch.com

This search will find pages that contain links to techcrunch.com. It

also finds links to www.techcrunch.com. This type of alert is a
great way to keep track of anyone linking to one of your sites or
competing sites.

You don’t have to include http:// at the beginning of the URL, but it
will also work if you do. If you search for a domain name, it will find
links to any page on that site. If you narrow down the URL to a
specific page, you will only find pages that link to that specific URL.
Google Alerts Power Primer Page 14 of 21

For example, link:techcrunch.com finds links to any page on the

Techcrunch.com site, but link:www.techcrunch.com/about-
techcrunch only finds pages that have links to this about page.

#33: Searching for URLs anywhere in a page

Link: only shows you pages that have a URL in a hyperlink. You
might also want to find pages that mention a URL without using it in
a link. If you use a URL in an alert, you will find items that contain
the part of the URL before the first period. A search for pizza.com,
will find pages that just have the word pizza. To find the exact URL,
you must put it in quotes:
“pizza.com”

This restriction is not necessary when you use intitle: or intext:. You
can search for intitle:pizza.com or intext:pizza.com without using
quotes, and you will find matches for the full URL.

#34: Searching for URLs in blogs

Alerts for bogs have their own problem when searching for URLs.
Google automatically converts a blog search for a URL into a link:
search. An alert for pizza.com ends up being treated as
link:pizza.com. The solution is again to use quotes around the
URL:
“pizza.com”

#35: Searching within a single site

A URL can be used with the site: operator to only search pages on
a specific site. If you use site: with a URL as the entire search, you
will receive alerts whenever a new page is added to that site:
site:techcrunch.com

You can also search for pages on a site with additional keywords,
so you will only see alerts if the site publishes a page containing
those words:
google site:techcrunch.com

Multiple words can be used with OR to see pages on that site with
any of the search terms:
(google OR apple) site:techcrunch.com
Google Alerts Power Primer Page 15 of 21

#36: Searching within the URL on a single site

Site: can be used with a URL that includes a subdirectory:
site:techcrunch.com/layoff

This will only find pages that are in that specific subdirectory. If you
want to find any page on a site that contains a keyword in the URL,
you should combine site: and inurl: in the same query:
site:techcrunch.com inurl:layoff

This finds any page on techcrunch.com with the word layoff

anywhere in the URL.

#37: Searching within multiple sites

If you want to search multiple sites, you can’t use multiple copies of
site: in the same search:
google site:techcrunch.com site:mashable.com
site:scripting.com

Google will interpret this as looking for a page that is on all the sites
at the same time. Since this is impossible, nothing is found. You
need to combine site: with OR to search any number of sites at the
same time:
google (site:techcrunch.com OR site:mashable.com
OR site:scripting.com)

#38: Searching top level domains

An important difference between inurl: and site: is that site: is
intelligent about searching for top level domains. A top level domain
or TLD is the last part of a URL, such as .com or .edu. If you create
an alert with inurl:edu, it will find pages with edu anywhere in the
URL, not just domain names ending in .edu. You need to use
site:edu, if you want to find pages only in educational domains:
social media site:edu

#39: Searching specialized domains

Site: allows you to create alerts for more specialized domains. The
Wikipedia list of top level domains contains some interesting
choices for use with site:, such as .museum for sites run by
museums:
picasso site:museum
Google Alerts Power Primer Page 16 of 21

Along with searching within pages for these TLDs, you can also set
up an alert for the TLD itself. This will notify you whenever a new
page is published by any site with the TLD:
site:mil

This search will alert you if a new page is published by the US

military.

#40: Searching for specific countries

Site: can also be used to narrow down alerts to specific countries.
The Wikipedia list of country code TLDs shows you all of the
available options.
social media site:de

There is no guarantee that the pages you find are actually on sites
from those countries, since it is possible to buy a domain name for
any country. Some country TLDs are also used for domain names
by Web 2.0 companies in a search for cool URLs.

#41: Searching for multiple TLDs

The rules for including multiple site: searches for top level domains
is the same as searching for multiple domain names. You must
separate each with OR:
social media (site:de OR site:uk OR site:mil)

#42: Excluding sites or TLDs

You can use –site to block results from specific sites or top level
domains:
social media –site:edu
social media –site:techcrunch.com

Multiple exclusions can be combined with OR:

social media (–site:com OR –site:edu)

#43: Excluding internal links

A common use of –site: is to combine it with link: to exclude
internal links:
link:techcrunch.com –site:techcrunch.com
Google Alerts Power Primer Page 17 of 21

This makes sure that you will only see new links to a site from other
sites. If you just search for link:techcrunch.com, you will also find
links from within techcrunch.com itself.

#44: Related sites

One of the more interesting search operators for Google Alerts is
related:, which shows you sites that Google thinks are similar to a
specified URL:
related:techcrunch.com

This will create alerts for new sites that have a similar linking and
text profile to techcrunch.com. This is a great alert to create for
tracking new competitors. You can create a related: alert for your
own site, or one the URL of you major competitors. You’ll be
notified as soon as Google thinks that another site is similar.

#45: Summary of URL based searches

There are so many ways to create alerts based on URLs, I thought
it would be useful to summarize them before we move on.

inurl: - Pages that contain a keyword in the URL.

allinurl: - Pages that contain a series of keywords in the URL.
link: - Pages that link to a specific URL.
site: - Pages with a full domain name or just the top level domain.
related: - Pages that Google thinks are similar to a specific URL.

#46: News alerts for a single location

Queries for news alerts can include a location: operator, which lets
you specify a city, country, or US state as the origin of the news
item. You can create an alert with just a location:
location:moscow

Or you can include keywords with the location:

red sox location:ma

For US states, you can use the full name or the standard US postal
abbreviation. For countries you can also use the full name or the
abbreviation as found in the standard Internet top level domain
country code.
Google Alerts Power Primer Page 18 of 21

#47: News alerts for cities

When creating an alert for a specific city, you should test the query
first with a Google search. The location: operator doesn’t allow you
to include a state or country along with the city name. This means
that Google has to make an assumption about which version of that
city you mean. For example, location:boston find news stories in
Boston, Massachusetts, but location:cambridge finds news from
Cambridge, England. As a resident of Lexington, Mass., I find it
disturbing that Google thinks that location:lexington means
Lexington, Kentucky.

When you want to use a city name with multiple words, you must
separate the words with an underscore (_), and don’t assume that
common city abbreviations will work. Location:la gives you news
for Louisiana, so you must use location:los_angeles if you want
news from that city.

#48: Multiple locations aren’t allowed

The Google documentation doesn’t say anything about this, but
from my tests multiple uses of location: in a single search doesn’t
seem to work. The standard Google syntax would imply that you
can search for location:ny OR location:ca, but when this is tested
with Google News, it only returns results from the state of New
York. In each test I’ve done, only the first location: seems to be
used. Another way of seeing that multiple locations are ignored is
that the total count of possible results is the same for a single
location or multiple locations.

#49: News alerts for a single source

News alerts can be limited with the source: operator, which lets
you name the news provider. You can create an alert with a
source: by itself to see all news from that provider:
source:ha'aretz

Or you can include keywords with the source. Multiple words in the
source’s title must be separated with an underscore (_).:
theater source:new_york_times

Just as with location:, using multiple copies of source: separated

with OR is ignored, and only the first source: is used.
Google Alerts Power Primer Page 19 of 21

#50: Finding comments on Google News

stories
Google News publishes comments from experts on some of its
news stories., and you can request alerts for these comments by
using the special source of google_news:
source:google_news

You can also combine this with keywords to see expert comments
on specific subjects:
obama source:google_news
Google Alerts Power Primer Page 20 of 21

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material in this book. I love talking to people about how they are
using Google Alerts to increase their productivity.

Adam Green
“Mr. Google Alerts”
http://alertrank.com/mrgooglealerts
adam@alertrank.com
781-879-2960
Google Alerts Power Primer Page 21 of 21