Video: How to Use Google Alerts
By Jonathan Bailey • Jan 24th, 2008 • Category: Articles, Videos
I have created a brief screencast demonstrating the use of Google Alerts in detecting content theft and plagiarism.
The screencast goes over all of the basics including choosing a term to search for, creating the alert, what you receive in the alert emails and how to manage the alerts that you’ve created. It also gives something of a sneak peek behind my Google Alerts strategy showing you the number of alerts I’ve created and the amount of potential plagiarism that I receive regarding my work.
It also showcases some of my bad habits including not appropriately tagging my emails or filing them away. Something I need to be better about.
Still, the screencast makes a point about the effectiveness and usefulness of Google Alerts for tracking your work as it is copied across the Web. It has also been my most-requested screencast.
So, if you can forgive a few rough edges, you will find the video embedded below and it runs about eight minutes. I look forward to your thoughts and feedback on it. I hope you enjoy it and find it useful.
Jonathan Bailey is The Webmaster and author of Plagiarism Today, which he founded in 2005 as a way to help Webmasters going through content theft problems get accurate information and stay up to date on the rapidly-changing field. He is also a consultant to Webmasters and companies to help them devise practical content protection strategies and develop good copyright policies.
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I’ve used Google alert before and I haven’t caught anymore stealing my poems. Then again, I haven’t gotten many comments on my poems, so I doubt anyone would plagiarize me. That’s why I took the HUDGE risk in posting them on Youtube. I have a few of questions
Is it useful to save the emails you receive from google alert?
Do you still write poems?
How do I message you on twitter like you’ve been doing with those other people.
To answer your questions. I find it useful to save emails. It makes it easy for me to search cases that I’ve handled and see if a site has come up before. Though you have to use title or URL, it works well for that purpose. Also, you can search for all of the cases of a particular work if you wanted, so long as you know the phrase you used.
Also, I do still write poetry, though not as often as I once did. I haven’t been putting them online though as my writing has been taking strange turns lately.
As far as messaging me on Twitter, depends on the client that you’re using. If you’re using the Web site, just go to my profile and click “Message Plagiarismtoday”
Hope that helps!
Very interesting video! Looking forward to the one on dynamic content so I can get on protecting that RSS feed of mine…
I’ve posted a few of my poems on Youtube, because I’d figured I’d have a better chance to get some readers. Plus, I’d figure it would be more creative to put them into video form. There’s a increased chance that I’d be plagiarized, so I’ll use google alert using your tips.
Justin: That is an interesting strategy, has it worked for you? I also doubt that putting your poetry into Youtube increases the risk, since there is no easy copy/paste, people are less likely to reuse it. However, they are also not searchable. It’s a give and take deal.
People could write out my poems (don’t know why they would waste their time doing that but anyway). People could also download my videos using firefox, but I’m not worried about that. So far I have 8 subscribers 5 friends. For most of my videos I simply attach them others as video responses.
Have you ever tried using the Saved Searches option at http://www.allth.at for creating persistent searches - I’m just curious.
Where can I read your poems? And for that matter, any other matter unrelated to plagiarism?
Noel: No, I haven’t, I’m bookmarking the site now. It’s an interesting idea but one of the perks of email is the ability to tag and file it (not that I’m actually doing any of that) I’m not sure how well that would work here.
Still, a very neat site and a very cool idea.
RS: I try to keep my literature separate from my writing here for a lot of reasons, would it be acceptable if I emailed you a link?
Indeed. You need not ask. Just shoot it off to my personal email address. Thanks.
It may lead to other discussions not quite relevant to the focus of this blog. I understand.
[...] up, to track content copying. There are ways to use existing tools for that purpose, such as with Google Alerts, but these are hacks designed to turn a generic search engine into a content detection tool. Even [...]