Category Archives: Google Alerts

Find and filter the best content on the web with Power Search

One of the most popular features of feedly Pro is the Power Search function, which gives you robust tools to find any piece of content from across the web. With Power Search, you can fine-tune your search results by searching for an author, searching specifically for videos, or searching within categories in feedly. For example, you can find the best reviews of a newly released product or monitor your brand within specific publications in a collection. The magic of searching on feedly is that you can search within the millions of sources that feedly is connected to, getting access to the millions of sources of content that make the quality and richness of the web.

feedly Power Search from Feedly on Vimeo.

01. Search within your feedly

Whether you’re looking for investment tips from sources you follow in feedly, an in-depth product review, or credible information on trending topics, feedly makes it easy to narrow your search results and search within sites you specify.

If you are a PR manager, for instance, you can designate your top-tier publications in one collection, your second-tier publications in another, blogs in another, and TV stations in yet another. Then you can search for specific news or companies by collections to create your coverage reports.

You can also search across all of your collections using Search in My Feedly. This will bring up search results only from sites that you already follow in feedly and your search results won’t be cluttered by other publications.

To find this feature, click on the drop down options under Search in and select My Feedly.

02. Search beyond your feedly

You can also search for news and information beyond the publications and blogs you follow within your feedly by using Search Beyond My Feedly. Searching beyond your feedly draws from the most popular sources across the whole feedly community, Using the feedly search engine produces rich, highly specific content on the web.

Once you find a story that you like you can easily tag it or mark it as Saved For Later. This will save your article in your Saved For Later section. To search beyond your feedly, click on the drop down options under Search in and select Beyond My Feedly.

03. Search within your Saved For Later

You can use feedly’s Saved For Later tool to save stories you want to read later. As your Saved For Later section grows, you may want an easy way to find a specific article you’ve saved. With feedly’s Power Search, you can easily search for stories within your Saved For Later, by relying on the same filters and sorting tools from Power Search. It makes finding saved stories simple and fast.

To search within your Saved For Later, click on the drop down options under Search in and select Saved For Later.

Pro tip: You can use the “Search in” filter to search within a collection and within tags as well.

04. Powerful filters to narrow your search results

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When you’re searching under stories in feedly, there are several powerful search filters to narrow your search results and find just what you’re looking for. You can search within tags or collections, within a specific time frame, or even look for specific media embedded in the search results (for instance, video).

  • Search Within: You can search within your different categories in feedly to get content that only certain publications you follow publish.
  • Time: You can define your search within today, the last seven days, the last 30 days, or forever, based on whether or not you’re looking for the most up-to-date news. Under the Time drop-down menu you can specify the time frame of your search.
  • Matching: You can search by either the author or the title. If you know the author’s name, you can specify that you only want to see articles written by that person by selecting “Author” from the dropdown menu under Matching. Similarly, you can select whether or not you want your search word to be in the title of the story by selecting “Title” in the same drop-down menu.
  • Sort By: With Sort By, search by popularity or chronologically. To read only the most popular stories, select Popularity in the Sort By drop-down menu. To see the most recent stories, select “Time: in the dropdown menu. This can be used for journalists who need to stay on top of recent, relevant news.
  • Embeds: feedly’s search also allows you to search specifically for stories with an image, video, audio, or document. To use this filter, select one of the options in the drop-down menu under Embeds. This can be useful for people looking across the web for video reviews, for instance.

05. Refine your search results with search operators

A search operator is something you can type into the search bar to modify your search results. Using these search operators can further refine your search results. You can specify exactly what you’re looking for and look for specific terms in your search results.

  • You can narrow your search results by using AND, OR, and NOT operators in the search bar. Using “AND” searches for stories that include two different topics. Using “OR” searches for stories related to one topic or another. Using “NOT” searches for one topic, but prevents another related topic from showing up in your search results.
  • Use parenthesis to tell feedly how to group your search operators. For instance, searching “iPad OR (iPhone AND Apple)” will give you stories that include both iPhonne and Apple or just iPad, whereas searching “(iPad OR iPhone) AND Apple” will give you stories that include all three.
  • Search with “+” and “-” to make your search results more specific. Doing so will add or delete certain topics in your search. For example, searching Apple -iPhone will show stories related to Apple, but without the word “iPhone”
  • To find an exact match for the phrase you’re searching for, use quotation marks. For instance searching “Taylor Swift” will give you results with the two words together, instead of an article with the two words separated – for instance, “Taylor Hansen is a swift runner.”
  • You can also search within a specific site. For instance, to search for stories from a particular TIME.com you could type into your search bar “site: TIME.com”.

06. Example: Find product reviews

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Now that you know the in’s and out’s of using Power Search, it’s time to put that knowledge to good use. One of the best ways to use Power Search is to look for product reviews. Searching for these within feedly ensures that they are timely, relevant, and from reputable sources. For product reviews you’ll want to use the following filters:

  • Search In: Beyond My Feedly
  • Time: should match the amount of time the product has been out
  • Matching: Title
  • Sort by: Popularity

07. Example: Learn a new skill

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Power Search is a great tool for finding stories that will teach you how to do something, whether it be simple, everyday tasks, or more complicated processes. Here are some filters you can use to get the best results. For learning a skill, it’ll be best to use these filters:

  • Search In: Beyond My Feedly
  • Time: Forever
  • Matching: Title

08. Example: Research a topic

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Using feedly for research is powerful because the filters in Power Search give you incredibly refined search results.

Use Google tracking tools with your feedly

feedly can be a great tool to follow updates from Google News feeds in real time and get your Google Alerts delivered straight to where you get your news. You can set up Google News feeds directly from the feedly search box and you can use a Google Alert RSS feed to follow your Alerts in feedly. Set up these tools to track product mentions or updates from your industry or competitors.

01. Follow a topic through a Google News feed

One feature of Power Search is that you can search in feedly or search in Google News. Searching in Google News will give you results from news publications, while feedly’s Power Search will give you filterable stories from all over the web. With feedly, you can create a feed to track a topic as it appears in Google News.

For example, if you want to track what large publications are saying about Salesforce, you can search for it in Google News, then add this Google News stream as a feed to your feedly. Doing this will add a new story to your feedly whenever a new article about Salesforce appears in Google News. Here are two simple steps to create a Google News feed:

  1. Search for a topic in the search bar in the upper right corner. Specify that you want to search “in Google News.”
  2. Your search results will show up like any feed in feedly, with the topic you searched for at the top. Click the green +feedly icon to add it to a collection.

02. Stay up-to-date with Google Alerts

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Another tool that is great for tracking is the Google Alert service. Google Alerts notifies you every time a specific person, topic, or brand is mentioned on the web, while a Google News feed find stories in Google news specific to that person, topic, or brand. Having Google Alerts allows you to stay on top of certain people or products so you can get up-to-date news to the minute.

Having Google Alerts in feedly is useful because you won’t have to check on multiple websites – everything is in one place, making it super easy to stay on top of things. In addition, sending your alerts to a feed is useful because it won’t clog up your email.  Here’s how you can set up Google Alerts in feedly:

  1. Go to www.google.com/alerts to go to your list of alerts or create an alert.
  2. Click on the edit icon next to the alert that you want to add to your feedly. Where it says “Deliver to,” select “RSS feed.” You can also specify the type of alert and how often you want to receive alerts on this screen. When you’re done, click the blue Update alert button.
  3. Click on the RSS feed icon to view the feed URL for your Google Alert. Copy and paste this URL into your search bar in feedly.
  4. A site with your Google Alert will come up. Click the green add button and you’ll be able to access your Google Alerts in feedly!

03. Using Boolean operators to refine your Alerts and Google News feeds

Searching with certain modifiers in the search bar get you more refined results. However, not all boolean operators will work with Google News and Alerts. Here are some of the operators that do work:

  • AND and OR allows you to search two topics and tells the search engine whether you want your results to include both topics or either topic. For instance, you can search Salesforce AND Canon or Salesforce OR Canon
  • Use parenthesis to tell feedly how to group your search operators. For instance, you will get different results when you search “(iPad OR iPhone) AND Apple” and “iPad OR (iPhone AND Apple)”
  • Search with “+” and “-” to make your search results more specific. Doing so will add or delete topics in your search.
  • To find an exact match for the phrase you’re searching for, use quotation marks. For instance searching “marketing strategies” will give you more accurate results than just marketing strategies without the quotes.