Google Alerts via RSS

I am trying to become a more efficient consumer of news and information. I was a bit late coming to the RSS party, mostly because I didn't truly realize the value it could create. However, once I started using RSS it became a passion of mine. I found it incredibly valuable to have my news & information delivered to me rather than having to go find it constantly (which always drops off when I get busy).

I found lots of cool tools that allow me to mix RSS, and filter RSS, and generally create mashups (more on this in future post). However, the one itch I could not scratch was the ability to consume my Google Alerts as an RSS feed. It seemed ridiculous to me that I couldn't find a little RSS icon anywhere on the Google Alerts page.

Luckily, after much searching, I found someone who had noticed that the URLs for individual Google Alerts looked a lot like those for Google News. So here's the scoop, if you want your Google Alerts as an RSS feed:

1. Goto Google News and enter the query that you would want to use for your Alert.
2. Look at the URL that is created as a result and pull out the q=______ section (hint: this is your querystring)
3. Add the querystring onto the following URL:
http://news.google.com/news?output=rss&q=________

Obviously replace the ________ with your querystring from step 2.... and Voila! You now have an RSS feed to import into Google Reader or whatever reader you prefer.