Google Unalerts

[sdelmonte]

This is a professional question, but one that I hope some of you know a little about.

I rely on Google Alerts - and Google overall - to find coverage of the Museum online. And a lot of the time, it's not a very efficient method since sometimes major coverage doesn't come to me in a timely fashion. (There are days when my colleague in the digital media department gets an alert hours before I do with the same exact search terms.)

But there is something new going on that I need to consider. Last weekend, the NY Times had a nice little write up about a Hanukkah lamp display here. Nothing huge, but Google Alerts didn't find it. And still hasn't. Indeed, Google doesn't seem to be finding anything in the Times now with ease. (I tried to search for this week's excellent three-part, 12 page feature on the late NHL enforcer Derek Boogaard and it was buried instead of being the first thing I found.)

So I ask you out there, does anyone have ideas about how Google Alerts and the news search system work? Is it possible that the NY Times paywall is keeping out Google? And does anyone know of other alert systems? Bing doesn't have any yet, and for that matter Bing's news search is pretty lame next to Google.

Any thoughts would be welcome. Thanks.

Comments

[dewline.livejournal.com]

Have you tried duckduckgo.com yet? (Although to be fair, their results are credited "Results by Bing, Built with Yahoo!", so...)

[osewalrus.livejournal.com]

I have been having similar problems.