A little tweak in the Google Alerts service now allows its users to keep tabs on their favorite topics when a video related to those appears.
Google Alerts have been helpful for tracking mentions of a topic, once it has been picked up by Google’s innumerable spiders that scour the web. All it takes is a quick visit to the Alerts page to set one up for a phrase one wants to track.
The Comprehensive option watches for Web, Blogs, News, and Groups mentions. Add Video to those choices, as Google noted on their official blog:
Video Alerts enables you to specify any topics or queries of interest so we can deliver interesting and relevant videos on a daily, weekly, or as-it-happens basis (your choice) to you via email.
To start receiving Video Alerts, you can visit the Google Alerts homepage directly or set up the alert during your normal video searches. Videos may come from Google Video, YouTube, or many other video sources on the web.
There are a couple of ideas we can take away from the announcement. First, ego surfing became a little more complete for those who obsessively track when they receive a mention online.
Second, although we’re pretty certain these Alerts only look at the text associated with a video’s description, the announcement could indicate Google has made inroads into its ongoing quest to develop piracy-detection tools for the entertainment industry.
Even if Alerts just picks up text, it does make it easier to find out when someone has threatened the very fabric of our society by posting two minutes of the latest South Park episode on YouTube.
