E-Mail Alerts - Information Trapping: Real-Time Research on the Web - page 71

here are huge numbers of additional options here. You can specify an exact
capitalization for Google Alert to search for. (his is handy if, say, you want
pages about Windows CE so you want to ind WinCE instead of the word
wince ). You can ilter out similar pages. You can even ilter out older results.
So if you've got a search that could use some extra iltering, especially for
punctuation and capitalization, I urge you to try Google Alert.
tip
How is google alert able to offer advanced searching options
that google can't? google alert ilters the searches after google
returns them. so when you use the capitalization and searching
options, you will get far, far fewer results than you would with the
regular google alert.
Once you've put together your queries, you can specify what results you want
to check (from the top 10 to the top 200), and how oten you want the results
checked (from as frequently as every day to as rarely as every month).
here are four levels of paid services available: a personal service for $4.95
a month, a premium service for $9.95 a month, a professional service for
$19.95 a month, and a platinum service at $39.95 a month. But you may ind
that the basic free service works just ine for you.
TracerLock
TracerLock (tracerlock.com) is a hybrid tool that lets you query search
engines and news sources and functions as a Web page monitor, too! It's
not free, but a 30-day free trial is available, which requires you provide a
credit card number.
TracerLock is actually several diferent monitors rolled into one: it moni-
tors news stories, search engines, and Usenet (online discussion groups).
Once you're logged in to TracerLock, click the “Click here to edit your search
terms” link. A form displays where you can list your search terms. On that
same page, you also have the option of entering your own news sources
that you want monitored for matches on your keyword ( Figure 4.7 ). If your
interest is very specialized and most news services are too general for you,
this is a great option.