Guide to Tracking Obscure News About Your Company

Select an RSS reader

There are hundreds of RSS reader (also called news reader) programs to choose from and many of them are free to use.

I recommend: Select an RSS reader and learn the basics of how to use it. The three most popular RSS readers are Bloglines, Google Reader, and My Yahoo.

Find a search engine that supports RSS

engines usually do not support RSS, but search engines that track up-to-the-minute information, like news search engines and blog search engines, often supply an RSS feed.

I recommend: If your search engine supports RSS, there is generally an icon on the results page of your search. The icon is usually, but not always, a small orange rectangle or square and will often be labelled with the letters RSS, XML, or ATOM. Sometimes there will be no icon, just a link for RSS, XML, or ATOM. Find feeds at Google News, Yahoo News, and Google Blog Search.

Load the search into your RSS reader

The last step is to load the search into your RSS reader so that whenever a new article appears online, it automatically appears in your RSS reader -- in most cases within minutes of the article being published online.

I recommend: Click on the RSS icon or link (it may say XML or ATOM). You will be directed to the RSS page which looks like a bunch of website code. Copy the website address from the address bar. Open your RSS reader and click on "Add Feed." Paste the website address into the form and your RSS reader will keep track of every article published for that search term from now on. To learn more about using feeds, see The RSS Blog or How to Use RSS and Newsreaders.