How many times do you visit Google to re-run a particular search? Would like like to know what Google ranking your site/ name etc. has, and when it changes? How often do you remember reading about something on one of the blogs you read, and subsequently have difficulty finding it via a general net search? Do you use a search engine like FreeFind on your own blog, and wish for a similar tool that will search through your blogroll? Then you'll want to check out these services...
Google Alert
... lets you track anything on the Web by running daily Google searches for you and emailing you when new results appear. This first email includes up to 50 results per search which you may have seen before. In the future, brief email alerts will include only new results that have not been reported before. Google Alert improves with time by learning which results you find the most relevant. After a few alerts, the relevance of each new result will be indicated with a rating of 1 to 5 stars. With your trial Google Alert service, you're limited to tracking only 3 search terms, and only the top 50 results per search. For far greater tracking power, you can track up to 50 search terms and the top 500 results per search with Google Alert advanced services.
However, you aren't limited to getting the results of your custom searches by e-mail: you can subscribe to them via RSS feeds as well. The Google page-rank of each hit is listed next to the page title:
Bloglines
Bloglines is a feed aggregator with a web interface. Once you've subscribed to your feeds (or imported a feed list in OPML format e.g. from NetNewsWire), you will see a pop-up menu with the following options:
If you choose "Search My Subscriptions" and enter a search term, you will be given the option to subscribe to that search:
If you do so, your search will show up under your list of subscribed feeds. It doesn't give you a feed URL to which you could subscribe using an alternative aggregator, but it does what it says on the tin:
Blogs I Read Search
This service is provided by Micah Alpern, and suggests that you apply for your very own Google Web APIs license key. Once you know this, enter it together with the URL of your blog here, point it towards your OPML file on your website (or Blogrolling account), then copy-and-paste the Javascript code into your web page. By default the search box includes radio-buttons for Google searches of the Web and for your site, as well as for the sites in your blogroll. It is possible to customize the code if, say, you are only interested in allowing a search of the blogs you read.
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