Comparing And Expanding The Use Of Google And Yahoo Alerts

Introduction

Google's search engine undoubtedly changed the world of search and the Internet by storm when it first came out. With its simple design and fast relevant results Google fast became the number one search engine in existence and Google soon became a household name. Yahoo! and other search engines were clearly affected, but with Yahoo's wide range of product offerings Yahoo was still safe and had their own niche. Google, however, started offering other products that clearly stepped on Yahoo's toes and the battle began. One such product is Gmail. Gmail shocked the other email providers out of their complacency when they offered 1GB of space for their users and along with it introduced cool new features (i.e. conversations) previously unheard of in the email industry. Gmail also operated with unprecedented speed and left new users wondering how they ever had the patience with their other email providers' speed. Yahoo then became clearly competitive and started ramping up their efforts to improve not only Yahoo Mail but their whole line of products. They knew that the days of complacency were over. Finally they had a worthy competitor. As for the users, good times was coming because with competition came better services for them.

Many of Google and Yahoo's products offerings, like web and image search, are almost indistinguishable from the user's point of view. However, there are also products that differ quite significantly, reflecting Google and Yahoo's difference in their general approach. One such is the Alerts. Google and Yahoo Alerts are simply updates on certain topics of interest delivered to individual users. Google and Yahoo Alerts differ in the kinds of alerts they offer, in the look, and the features they bring. A casual glance at their alerts page would even make a user think that they do not have the same function.

Google Alerts

Google Alerts, just like their web search, is a simple, no fuss, and result oriented product. It gives email updates of the relevant Google results based on your choice of query or topic. Google Alerts deliver updates only via email and gives the users the option of telling Google how frequently they want to receive updates. Google Alerts offer only three types of alerts based on Google search results from the Web, the News, and blogs. It is somewhat limited compared to the alert types that Yahoo has to offer. However, since it is query-based the alerts can be virtually about anything you are interested in getting updates of. The key with Google Alerts is to enter keywords or key phrases that will give you the most relevant results.

The Google Alerts page is very simple and is very easy to manage. It, however, lacks any aesthetic appeal whatsoever, except maybe for the fact that the text is very readable and the color scheme is not garish. The alerts page looks really bland. But for those who are after function and relevancy of results this should be no problem.

Google is however out to address the problem of visual design. For the first time since Google came out they have asked a visual design guru to join the company to give their products a much needed facelift. Hopefully Google Alerts will be one of the first to get some makeup on.

Yahoo Alerts

Yahoo Alerts offers a volley of alert types. Some of the alert types are: Missing Children, Auctions, Breaking News, Feed/Blog, Health News, Horoscope, Mail, Market Summary, Movie Recommendations, Music, Sports, Stocks, The Apprentice: Donald Trump, Traffic, Weather, Travel Destinations, Yahoo! 360, etc. Each alert type has a different format and has to be activated in different ways. For example to for Blog Alert users have to enter the URL for a website's RSS feed, choose how often they want to be updated, and then choose the mode of delivery. For Travel Destinations Alerts users have to choose among a list of cities the destination they are interested in. Yahoo will then send the users updates on airfare, hotel and car deals for that destination as well as photos, reviews, and news. The alert types Yahoo offers are very interesting and varied and will surely be of importance to many people. Due to the many options it appears to be more customizable than Google alerts. However, since the alert types are all pre-packaged there is actually less versatility as compared to the alerts one can get from Google, which if used properly can actually give you a more customized and specific alert.

An advantage Yahoo Alerts has over Google alerts is their varied modes of delivering the updates. Google sends updates to users through email only but Yahoo users have the choice of receiving updates through emails, yahoo messenger, and even their mobile phones and other mobile devices. This is of course very useful to users who are not online all the time and wish to be updated whenever and wherever they are.

Another big plus for Yahoo is their look. The Yahoo Alerts home looks simple and but is very pleasing to the eye. It's very easy to shift from creating new alerts to managing your present alerts. The format for creating each new alert is not very consistent though (i.e compare create Music Alerts and Destination Alerts). The inconsistency is not such a big deal but I would prefer a more consistent look so as to not be confusing and generally pleasing. That's just my preference though. But for the eye candy factor, Yahoo Alerts, unsurprisingly, wins over Google Alerts.

Using Yahoo and Google Alerts

The key to making either of the two alerts work for you is your innovativeness. Although most users probably use Yahoo and Google alerts to simply keep track of simple updates like the weather, stocks and news, which by the way are the most popular types of Yahoo Alerts, some users have taken it a step further and made the alerts work for them. People use the alerts not only to keep track of their interests but to keep track of other things as well like:

• their competition
• how widely and how fast their press releases are being picked up by other publications
• emerging trends
• websites that are try to sell hacks or downloads of a certain software owned or sold by their company
• add a news update section to their site

These examples can be found on a forum discussion on Google and Yahoo Alerts from Web Pro World.