Google Power Tools Bible

E-mail alerts are saved topic searches through Google News, Google Groups, or the Web on topics you choose. When those searches meet a threshold of relevance, an alert is sent to your e-mail account letting you know about the information that triggered the alert.

By signing up for Google E-mail Alerts, Google sends information and news directly to you by e-mail. You decide the topic of the E-mail Alert and how often you want Google to send it. There are four types of Google E-mail Alerts:

• News: Every time your selected topic makes it into the top ten news articles through your saved Google News search, you receive the alert.

• Web: When the top 20 search results for your Web topic search change, a Google E-mail Alert is sent to you.

• News and Web: This is a combination of News and Web alerts. When your topic search results in hits from either of these two lists, you will you receive an e-mail alert.

• Groups: When you subscribe to a Google group, you can add an alert so that you get an e-mail when there is a new post to that group.

If you’re like most people, you get a lot of e-mail, some of it from people you know and some from people you wish would not send you e-mail. However, with the amount of e-mail most people get, sensitivity to the number of e-mail messages you receive has grown. You can choose how often you want Google to send you an alert by selecting one of these options:

• Once a day: Each day Google sends you an e-mail when your topic triggers an alert sometime throughout the day.

• As-it-happens: Google sends you the alert immediately each time your topic triggers the alert.

• Once a week: You receive a single weekly e-mail from Google combining all the alerts that have accumulated throughout the week.