Create a RSS feed of a "regular" Google Search:
Search through the Google Alerts search site. You will see a preview of what type of results you will receive. You can choose the frequency and volume of the alerts as well as choose between email and RSS alerts.
You can manage your Google Alerts here.
Create email alerts from Google Scholar:
Search Google Scholar. Use the Advanced Search option to make sure you get only the results you want. Explanations of Google Scholar's advanced search can be found here. If you don't want patents, be sure to exclude them as they are automatically included. To configure Google Scholar to recognize you as an MU person and link you directly to MU resources, see here.
After searching, click the little envelope to set up email alerts. You do not need a Gmail address to use this.
To receive alerts from Google Scholar when an article is cited, see here.
Subscribe to a Google News RSS:
Search Google News, then scroll to the bottom of the page to create an email alert or to subscribe to the RSS feed. Google News also has some premade RSS feeds that you can find here.
Or you can personalize your Google News page (news subjects, sources, etc.) and scroll to the bottom of the page to subscribe to your personalized RSS feed.
Google Search Tips:
The Google Alerts search doesn't have all the advanced search features of a regular Google search, but you can use several tricks. You can see them all here, but here is a quick list.
| What you search | What it will do |
| dog bites * |
The * is a fill-in-the-blank or placeholder for words. So this search will find "dog bites hurt," "dog bites man," dog bites case," etc. |
| dogs -puppies | If you put a minus sign in front of a word, Google will exclude any results with that word. This search will find everything about dogs, but ignore any results that are about puppies. |
| dogs cats | You don't need to use "and" with Google, so if this will automatically search for dogs and cats. |
| dogs OR cats | This will find anything that is about dogs and anything that is about cats. This is like combining a search for "dogs" with a search for "cats." |
| "dogs are awesome" | The quotation marks make Google search for that exact phrase. If a website was called, "dogs are so awesome," Google would ignore it. |
| dogs site:nytimes.com | This will search for mentions of dogs only from nytimes.com. It will only search this one website. |
Ashley Nelson
(573) 882-1670
nelsonab@missouri.edu
Ellis Library Reference
(573) 882-4581
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