Ego Searches and RSS 
By S. Housley 
====================


Ego searches are f.ree and simple searches designed to 
monitor blogs and news portals for mentions of your company, 
product, competitors or other specific keywords. Conducting 
ego searches not only allows you to stay informed, but also 
allows you to maintain a strategic advantage over competing 
companies. A number of new Internet services are freely 
available that make these 'ego searches' painless and easy. 
 
Dynamically created keyword based RSS feeds, update in your 
RSS reader or news aggregators, each time new information 
containing the keyword appears in the searched resources. 
The dynamic feeds match requests against new information, as 
it comes online in real time. The following f.ree services 
allow for RSS feed ego searches. 

Google News - Simply conduct a keyword search of Google News 
and then c1ick the text that says "RSS" then save the url of 
the RSS feed into your news reader. Every time a new article 
with that keyword appears in Google News the feed in your 
RSS reader will automatically update. 
http://news.google.com/news 

BlogPulse - Find out what is being said about your products, 
company or your industry in the blogosphere. Conduct a 
keyword or url search on BlogPulse. Click the orange RSS 
icon above the search results and save the feed in your 
reader. Each time the keyword appears in a blog indexed by 
BlogPulse you will receive a new item in your feed reader. 
Another feature of BlogPulse is it will graph the keyword 
occurrences, providing a picture representation so that 
trends can be easily visualized. Hovering over the lines of 
the graph will provide details of actual blog mentions. 
http://www.blogpulse.com

PubSub - Search on a keyword, then save and add the feed to 
your RSS reader using the icons provided. Optionally with 
PubSub you can direct your search to only alert you of posts 
in specific areas of interest including Press Releases, 
SEC/EDGAR Filings, Newsgroup Posts, or Weblog Entries  
http://www.pubsub.com

Technorati - Create watch lists, by entering the search term 
add item to the watch list and then scroll to the bottom 
click the blue RSS icon to obtain the url of the RSS feed 
that can be added to your reader. Technorati is a real-time 
search engine that keeps track of what is going on in the 
blogosphere. In order to setup a watchlist you will have to 
create a Technorati account. 
http://www.technorati.com

Ice Rocket - Simply search Ice Rocket then c1ick the RSS 2.0 
button to obtain the url of the RSS feed that contains your 
search term. Add the url to your RSS reader or 
newsaggregator. 
http://www.icerocket.com/ 

Find Articles - Traditional media channels can even be 
monitored using RSS. FindArticles routinely scans magazines 
and publications for keyword mentions. Conduct a search then 
click "RSS Alert" to obtain the url to the RSS feed. Add the 
feed to your reader to receive instant notification of new 
articles. 
http://www.findarticles.com/ 

NewsTrove - NewsTrove indexes millions of news articles from 
a myriad of sources. Build an RSS feed on any topic 
imaginable. Enter your search words in the search box. Click 
'Search' click the orange XML icon on the right side of the 
search results page and save the feed to your news reader. 
http://www.newstrove.com 

BlogDigger - BlogDigger monitors the blogosphere and 
generally what is said daily in the blogs. Conduct a search 
on Blogdigger and click the orange XML icon to retrieve the 
url of the search feed. The feed should then be added to 
your RSS reader. 
http://www.blogdigger.com/

DayPop - Conduct a search and click the icon on the right 
that says XML, save the feed to your RSS aggregator. Only 
the most recent search results will appear. 
http://www.daypop.com

Yahoo News - Conduct a search then click "view as RSS" in 
the right column save the feed in your aggregator. The feed 
will check Yahoo news for mentions. 
http://news.yahoo.com/

Overall, ego searches are an excellent way to stay informed 
and maintain a strategic advantage over competitors. Knowing 
exactly what your online competitors are doing provides a 
competitive edge that can be used to your advantage. Keyword 
RSS feeds can be used to monitor key phrases for trademark 
abuses or monitoring the effectiveness of a specific press 
promotion.  

Although they sound daunting ego searches are simply good 
business sense. 

=====================
About the Author: 
Sharon Housley manages marketing for FeedForAll 
http://www.feedforall.com software for creating, editing, 
publishing RSS feeds and podcasts. In addition Sharon 
manages marketing for FeedForDev http://www.feedfordev.com 
an RSS component for developers.