Google Alert Now Offers New Features, Case/Punctuation Filtering

Sometimes I realize just how much of a search nerd I am. When I got the announcement that Google Alert is now offering new features, including the ability to filter for precise capitalization or punctuation, I thought, "Oh wow. Oh wow. Massively cool. And maybe one day someone can implement API-based stemming capabilities!"

See? Nerd.

But based on the e-mail I get complaining that Google can't do searching on capitalization or punctuation, I guess I'm not the only nerd who wanted this feature, so let's look at it. Google Alert ( http://www.googlealert.com ), as you might remember, is an alert service that sends you e-mail notifications of new additions to the Google index.

You'll need to be registered, but the service is free. Once you're registered and signed in, you'll be shown a list of five query boxes in which you can specify searches (you don't have to use all five of course.) For each query you can get up to 50 results. Click on the blue >> icon next to the query box for advanced search options, because that's where the fun is.

In your query, you can specify exact capitalization and punctuation that you want, then specify that your search results only show that capitalization or punctuation. You can also specify the particular file formats you want to look for. Google Alerts have always been handy, but now they're even handier. I just wish they'd offered an interface that offers direct results (instead of just alerts with new results) with capitalization and punctuation filters.

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