Tracking Obscure News About Your Company

Using Searches and RSS Feeds to Track Highly Specific Subjects

Did you ever want to find out what was being written about your company on the internet? How about what was being written about your competitor? Using news searches, blog searches and RSS technology lets you find out when someone writes something about a subject you are interested in within just a few minutes of that article being published online. What you must know about using searches and RSS feeds:

Many types of searches on the internet are now featuring an RSS feed (short for Really Simple Syndication) for that search.
An RSS feed lets you subscribe to that search and be informed when a new article on the subject of your choice has been written.
A program called an RSS reader is used to keep track of the RSS feeds you subscribe to.

Get it done. Follow these steps to track a specific subject:

Select an RSS reader

There are hundreds of RSS reader (also called news reader) programs to choose from and many of them are free to use.

Find a search engine that supports RSS

engines usually do not support RSS, but search engines that track up-to-the-minute information, like news search engines and blog search engines, often supply an RSS feed.

Load the search into your RSS reader

The last step is to load the search into your RSS reader so that whenever a new article appears online, it automatically appears in your RSS reader -- in most cases within minutes of the article being published online.

Remember that the RSS feed does not appear on the home page of the search engine, it appears on the results page.
The search term you track could be anything including your company name, your CEO's name, your competitor, your industry, or even a personal hobby.
Track as many terms as you want. RSS readers can track hundreds of RSS feeds at one time.
Search news items with Google News, Yahoo! News, or your local newspaper's online search if they support RSS (many do not).
Many RSS readers will load the RSS feed automatically, without having to copy and paste the RSS webpage address.
RSS feeds are also found on non-search sites, but are not as specific. You can find RSS feeds on blogs, and more general RSS feeds on newspaper websites. A newspaper RSS feed might give you all the news from the sports section, for example.