Lakeland, Florida Ledger Online news editor Barry Friedman posted a note on the online news list this am, talking about how he used Google News as a tipsheet for local Lakeland-Florida area stories.
This caught my interest, because I do the same thing (not for Florida, obviously).
So I wrote back to him, asking for more details on the kinds of queries he set up.
Barry’s searches are geographic queries such as winter haven florida , lakeland, florida, etc. and set with dashes–around the ledger–to rule out results from his own paper.
Mine are celebrity and business keywords– Britney Spears (okay, you know I love pop culture and trash!) AOL, Yahoo, Friendster, Netscape(the most depressing), web log, blog, online advertising, and so on.
How about other people?
What queries are you using Google alerts to check–and why?