Every morning, the president’s advisers assemble a summary of key news and security topics for him to digest over breakfast. Here’s a handy Google feature which will do the same thing for you!

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It’s called Google Alerts, and it’s very easy to set up. You basically establish search criteria, and then a frequency for receiving the information. The content get’s summarized and packaged for you, and delivered via email to your inbox.

For instance, if you want to get a breakdown on the latest NFL scores, then you can create a simple alert such as the one below:

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This can be a very handy tool for getting alerts on companies or industries in which you are an investor, or for getting some recent news on a competitor.

PRO’s

  • easy to set up and it’s free!
  • provides a nice, neat summary with links to the articles, websites or video content
  • provides an alert on whatever term you can imagine
  • allows you to set the frequency of alert (i.e. when they happen, daily, or weekly)
  • you can always visit your alerts and the content that your alert has generated by visiting the website https://www.google.com/alerts

CON’s

  • you must have a Google account to use this feature
  • you’re basically asking Google to provide an alert based on a search string, and it can bring up all types of things, so your search criteria might need some modification to weed out noise
  • If you wanted to get the alert on Monday morning at 8 AM, you have to first create the alert on a Monday morning at 8 AM! It doesn’t allow you to set specific day or time to receive the alerts summary.

SETTING IT UP

(1) Visit https://www.google.com/alerts and make sure you have logged in to your Google account

(2) Enter your search term. While you are entering your search term, you should see an “Alert Preview” just below your criteria. If you adjust your search term, it should also adjust your Alert Preview content. To omit certain expressions from your search criteria use a minus (-) sign. For instance, if I wanted to get NFL scores but didn’t want to include the Steelers, then I would write it like this: nfl scores -steelers

(3) Adjust the frequency of your alert monitoring, sources of information, and delivery criteria

(4) Select “Create Alert”

Once it’s been setup, you can always return to this same site to view content surrounding your alert. You can adjust the search string or frequency. If you use Google News, you can add this alert search string to a section on your http://news.google.com summary page. Or if you get sick and tired of getting the alert, you can always select the trash bin icon to delete it.

So if you’re feeling presidential and want to get your daily dose of selective news or specific content, then try setting up Google Alerts!

Do you have other presidential alert ideas such as this one? Then post your comment below!