Using RSS Part 3

Posted on February 19th, 2009 in RSS for Beginners

This is Part 3 in my series on RSS. It is aimed at those who are new to using RSS. Please read parts 1 & 2 first.

Something really cool has happened. My sister sent me an email saying she has Google Alerts set to send her an email when somebody posts something about SQIP. She got one yesterday for http://www.5z5.com/Feeds/?6a7754e021fb84d8 and was surprised because it is for my blog. Small world isn’t it. I’m just glad my promotional efforts are doing something.

In an earlier post I said that you can have Google search results sent to your reader and I wanted to follow up on that. It’s not as complicated as it looks. If you haven’t played around with your Google search results before you might find that it is even more helpful than you imagined.

I have another blog called Cheap Living Today and I am always looking for relevant ideas to write about. Let’s make a search feed for my Google reader that will help me keep tabs on what people are posting about cheap living. First, open your Google search page, type in cheap living and then press enter.

google_cheap_living

I’m sure you know what the Google Search page looks like but just to keep us on the same page. This is what it looks like in my Firefox browser. If you use another browser, it will look a little different but that doesn’t matter. It will do the same thing. This next picture is of my results.

results_cheap_living

Once you have the results page, look at the top of it and you will see a list that on my page includes Web, images, maps, news, shopping, etc. Click on the NEWS link and your search will change to one that is focused on cheap living news. Cool Huh! Here’s the best part. At the bottom of the left side column, on my page there is a RSS link. If it isn’t there, it should be somewhere on your page. You want to click that and then tell it to send it to your reader. Now when news about cheap living is posted on the web, Google sends the update to your reader.

google_reader_news_for_cheap_living I can think of all sorts of uses for this. It would be great for students writing term papers, bloggers who need more information about their subject, keeping an eye on your competition at work or even for researching your next vacation. What ever you find interesting can be googled and sent to your reader which makes it a powerful tool.

If any of this helps you, please add my feed to your reader or join my email list. I take your privacy seriously and will never sell your information to anyone. If you have any questions, please comment on this post because someone else will be wondering the same thing. Otherwise, you can always use the contact tab at the top of the page.