Well, hello there.

I wanted to do a quick demo video for

you about how to setup search alerts through a search engine.

Now you'll notice that I have chosen to use Google for this demo.

If you don't have Google available to you or heck,

you just prefer a different search engine, that's okay.

The mechanics basically apply, they all basically work the same way.

The first thing you'll need to do is navigate to the search

engine's home page and you can see that I'm at google.com.

And then if you come over here in the top right corner,

you'll see the sign in button and you need to sign in with your email account and

this is one of my Gmail accounts that I tend to use for work.

It's publicly available, sorry to disappoint.

It's not super secret, anybody can find that Gmail account.

So I've put in my password and I'm going to uncheck the stay signed in button,

because this is a shared computer.

So you don't wanna forget and stay signed in.

Now it's also giving me the option to save my password, which no, I don't wanna do.

And now you can see that once I've signed in, hooray.

For remembering your password, it knows that it's me.

So, I can come up here to the URL box and type in alerts.

Now you'll see that I already have six alerts set.

I have a couple of different research interests having to do with technology and

healthcare and I also work on an interdisciplinary capstone for

optical head mounted displays, such as Google Glass and Vuzix.

And part of what I bring to the table is up to the minute,

current awareness of what's happening in the news with those items.

So that's one way that search alerts are exceedingly useful.

You'll notice also, these two search alerts here.

Remember, I always take my own good advice.

So I do have search alerts set for Kimberly Barker and

kimberlyrbarker@gmail.com.

Now the one I'm going to put in today is kimberlyrbarker and

I'll tell you why I do that.

I have worked very carefully over the last few years to incorporate the R,

which is the first initial of my middle name into my professional identity.

It is a further way to distinguish myself from other Kimberly Barkers.

Although the L-E-Y is a distinguishing feature on its own, but

that is just one more subtle, easy way to distinguish me from the other

Kimberley Barkers out there in the world and you will notice that I put

quotation marks around that and this is a library 101 trick here for you.

Whenever you're setting up any kind of search,

whether it's just a regular search or a search alert, whatever.

If it is a phrase or in this case a name, you wanna put quotes around it,

because just like sheep who are not the most organized creatures in the world and

who left to their own devices will run around.

Not in an orderly line, but just willy nilly all over the place,

your search terms will get scattered.

So just like the sheep, what you have to do is date with sheep, you take a dog and

you round them up and put them in a pen and slam the gate and

that forces them to stay together.

So think about, there are quotation marks as the actual pen and

you're search terms inside of it as sheep.

It forces them all to stay together in a particular way.

If I did not do that, I would get all kinds of Kimberlys, I would get Barkers,

I would get things that are not what I'm looking for.

And the whole purpose of a search alert is to make your life easier.

So incorporating those, I think you'll find very helpful.

The other thing I'd like to point out to you is the show

options feature and this is really nice.

Because again, it's giving you a lot of control over this particular search query.

You can decide how often you want to receive updates,

you can decide if you want only specific sources to show up or

if you choose automatic, that's gonna be everything.

Sadly, I am only truly fluent in English.

So I have to leave it as English, but there are lots of options there and

I wanna know what might be happening in any part of the world not

just the United States or any particular one region.

And you can choose as far as how many results, only the best or all.

All is pretty self-explanatory and

only the best will mean a determination by Google's algorithm.

And then you can choose here, specifically where you want these alerts delivered.

Now I have several different email addresses and

several different Google addresses, Gmail addresses.

So but I want these to come to the kimberlyrbarker one,

so I'm gonna leave that alone.

Now the other thing I wanna show you is the alert preview and

this is really helpful to make sure before you create the alert

that you are getting the kinds of results that you want.

So say, it's a topic about which you're not really sure,

you don't really know a whole lot about it.

The alert preview will give you some insight into the sort of results that

you will be getting.

So you can see, yes, this is me.

This is from a blog that I was mentioned on.

This is my twitter bio.

This is my bio with the library where I work.

This is my about.me page.

So yes, all of these are me, which is good.

That's great.

Tells me I'm on the right track.

So now, I'm ready to actually create the alert, and that is done with a simple

click of the create alert button and now you can see that it's right there.

I hope you guys found this helpful.

If you have any experience with using search alerts, if you found them to be

very useful or maybe not useful at all, maybe you didn't set it up correctly or

it really wasn't what you needed and you had to play with your search terms,

anything like that, the community would love to hear about that.

So please, share that with us and I hope it was helpful.

How to Create an Alert in a Search Engine

Introduction to Personal Branding

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