Let Google Alerts help you with your Genealogy research

You are working your way through your family tree, one person after another, then the next generation, then another. You dutifully plug each name/place/date into the Google search engine looking for those elusive matches to newspaper articles, obituaries or (the motherlode) another researcher working on the same person!

But what if you search for great grandad Rudolph Litmus Hedgehog on December 20 and I update my blog on December 22 with my findings?

When is the next time you are going to get around to looking for Grandpa Rudolph in the search engine?

What if I let you in on a cool solution to that very problem? I bet you'd like me just a little bit more...

Here's what you do... after you've had a good look around for Grandpa, tell Google Alerts that you want the mighty power of Google to keep a vigilant eye peeled for any new information about Rudolph that appears on the Internet.  Visit http://www.google.com/alerts, log in with your Google account (or get one) and fill in the handy form that looks like this:

Cool, eh?

Just pop "Rudolph Litmus Hedgehog" into the Search terms box, choose your settings and create the alert.  Hint: use the quotes to avoid those annoying unrelated hits on reindeer, ballet dancers, chemists and Spiny Norman fans.

Now you just go on with your meaningful and interesting life, while the massive Google server collective looks and looks and looks until it finds my little blog post.  Bells go off and an email is sent directly to you with a link to the very page you want to read.  Your smile grows wider and we become best friends and long-lost cousins.

Until two months from now when Cathy posts her announcement of her comprehensive History of the Hedgehog Family... and we both update our wills in her honour.

Give Google Alerts a try... you won't regret it and your mailbox will tingle with little surprises for you.  By the way, this tool also works for non-genealogy searches.  You can even make up an alert for your own name to check up on your own Internet reputation... another good idea.

Happy Alerting!