Trapping Topic-Based Information - Information Trapping: Real-Time Research on the Web - page 144

Replace keyword at the end of the URL with whatever keywords you're inter-
ested in. Aside from that, the usual rules apply: get really speciic and run
some test queries (on Amazon) irst.
If you don't want to hack URLs but instead want to ill out a form and
get a feed, try Paul Bausch's Amazon RSS feed generator at onfocus.com/
amafeed/. Specify the keyword and department in which you're interested,
and how you want to sort, and the generator will create a feed for you. You
can also generate a feed based on Amazon's power search syntax, if you're
familiar with it.
Page monitoring at Amazon
Maybe you're really interested in a keyword-based search, or maybe you're
interested in monitoring an entire category. I feel for you! You have one
more option, though it may not work that well for you. You have to use a
page monitor. You can also use a page monitor if you don't want to use RSS
feeds. It's just a bit tricky.
Run the keyword search of your choice. Your keyword should, on its list of
results, generate a list of categories on its let that shows you which catego-
ries have results that match your search. Pick the category of your choice.
Say, for example, I want to monitor for sotware related to woodworking. I
run a keyword search and pick “sotware.” here are only a few results and
they all it on one page, so I can just put this URL into a page monitor and
I'll be set ( Figure 7.20 ).
But say I wanted to monitor Home and Garden, which has well over 100
results. he irst thing I would do is take a quick look-see at the results and
see if there's any keyword I can use to remove results en masse. I notice that
there are several parts available from Woodstock International, and they're
really not what I'm looking for.
I change my search to woodworking -woodstock . hat instantly reduces my
search results to a manageable one page. Beyond that if I chose I could nar-
row my results more by choosing a subcategory (kitchen, home and decor),
eliminating more query words, etc.
So use a combination of narrow query words and eliminating brand names
and words that describe what you don't want and try to get your results