Every work day morning, after I've had my Tahitian Noni Juice, I go to the front door where I find four newspapers waiting at my doorstep: The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle and USA Today.

After seeking inspiration for new Rugged Elegant Living and RE: San Francisco stories, I go to my computer to check our site traffic from the day before, and the amount of money we have made from our contextual commerce, Google AdSense, and affiliate advertising links.

And then I check my email for the latest and greatest Google News Alerts.

Everyone has heard of Google. The search engine is so well known, loved and integrated into the fabric of our every day lives, we've turned the word into a verb. I will be the first to tell you that I recently "googled" Joss Stone & Betty Wright and found out...

Mind, Body & Soul is must buy, by the way, as is Joss Stone's first CD Soul Sessions.

As a publisher, I frankly spend more time on Google's three year-old news site than the seven year-old general search engine.

Those who don't "wake up" to RuggedElegantLiving.com or BioSpace (my first baby) have told me they've made Google News their home page.

However, when I ask, "What keywords have you used to create Google News Alerts," even the savviest people in San Francisco often look at me quizzically and say, "What are Google News Alerts?"

What Are Google Alerts?

Google News Alerts are the best thing since CompuServe sent me news clippings of the America's Cup yachting race when it took place in Fremantle Australia. (That was 1986.)

Google News Alerts are, in my mind, one of the top ten free information services for publishers, entrepreneurs, teachers, parents, students, or anyone, for that matter, with a curious mind, and a specific passion or interest.

Thanks to Google News Alerts, I'm able to easily track the "rugged elegant" people, places, products, performances, prose and photographs we're interested in promoting on our site.

Thanks to Google News Alerts, I was first introduced to the young, new artist, Jamie Cullum. This alert led me to report on him, even before USA Today discovered this phenomenal British jazz pianist and his hit album TwentySomething.

As a result, it also gave us the opportunity to see him perform live in San Francisco at Bimbo's 365 Club amidst a crowd of 600 people, rather than the 10,000 person stadiums he packs in the U.K.

Thanks to Google News Alerts, I've scooped many "traditional" and even online publishers on hot news stories. I used to rely on PRNewswire for press releases. Now Google often picks them up and alerts me to them, faster than I can find them through one of the oldest public relations services in the country.

Thanks to Google News Alerts, I know within minutes of a story breaking what is taking place with any number of financial investments I've made.

Thanks to Google News Alerts, I'm current on hot personal topics like diabetes and celiac.

Thanks to Google News Alerts, the concept of push technology is alive and well in my e-mail box, on the fly aka "as it happens."

Almost too well, I might add.

Google Alerts are emails automatically sent to you when there are new Google results for your search terms.

Google currently offer three types of alerts: 'News,' 'Web,' and 'News & Web.'

The key is to choose keyword combinations that are meaningful and garner good results.

To give you a taste, a few of my Google News Alerts include:

"luxury products" - pertinent to RuggedElegantLiving.com
"San Francisco travel" - relevant to RE: San Francisco
"parenting, mentoring" - appropriate personally and for Thrive
"diabetes, celiac" - for my personal interest & use
"company name" (wouldn't you like to know) - for competitive and investment analysis

So, why am I sharing this valuable secret with you?

In great part, because, I believe it is inspirational. Anything that can save us time and offer us all another editorial function, deserves a plug.

And in part, because both Rugged Elegant Living and RE: San Francisco are two of 4,500 unique content publishers that Google relies on to deliver their aggregated news to the world, every day. So, if you don't find our Rugged Elegant Living or RE: San Francisco stories in the "natural" search results, you are sure to often find them at the top of "the most relevant" Google News search results. Or at least searchable within the category "by date."

Two of the many "make me smile" days I've had since starting Rugged Elegance last year was when I got an email from a past BioSpace employee who said, "Jennifer, your latest San Francisco symphony story was #2 in my "symphony" Google News Alert. Congratulations!"

The other came from one of our past investors whose Home page is the Google News Headlines. One of our Passion of The Christ stories made it on the headlines page that day.

Thanks to news aggregators like Google, unique content sites like ours get rewarded for offering positive and inspirational stories. (How we make money at it is another story.)

As I understand it, a site's ranking in Google's search results is automatically determined by computer algorithms using thousands of factors to calculate a page's relevance to a given query.

Search results are generated completely objectively. Google says they are independent of the beliefs and preferences of those who work at the company.

The question I have is what are the algorithms used in Google's software that determine what news stories are considered "most relevant"?

Who knows? Only Google, perhaps? Or the brainiest of search engine software developers? That's why Larry and Sergey are billionaires, and I'm not!

The thing I do know and you should too:

Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic.

Some handy uses of Google Alerts include:

* monitoring a developing news story
* keeping current on a competitor or industry
* getting the latest on a celebrity or event
* keeping tabs on your favorite sports teams

With a Google Account you can:

* Create Alerts without email verification
* Change how often an alert is emailed
* Access other Google products like Answers, Google Groups and more!

You'll find this description verbatim when you go to:

What is the difference between 'News,' 'Web,' and 'News & Web'?

A 'News' alert is an email that lets you know if new articles make it into the top ten results of your Google News search.

A 'Web' alert is an email that lets you know if new web pages appear in the top twenty results for your Google Web search.

A 'News & Web' alert is an email that lets you know when new articles related to your search term make it into the top ten results for a Google News search or the top twenty results for a Google Web search.

The last reason I am sharing this tidbit of information, for all you smarter-living knowledge hungry computer users, is because Google has created a service, that we have not yet implemented ourselves. Their free Alerts service enables our worldwide audience (last I checked: 369,932 unique visitors for the month of September - save today) to receive an email every time we post a story.

I hear a lot of people say, "I love your site, I just wish I had time every day to check it out."

Most everyone I know, checks their email every day, if not throughout the day.

With Google Alerts, you automatically get "alerted" via email every time we post a story on one of our sites.

How Do I Sign Up

Let me make it easy on you.

Simply go to: Google.com/Alerts

Enter: "Rugged Elegance" and the type of results you'd like (News, Web, or News & Web). Tell them often you'd like them to check for results. And then give Google the email address to which you want the alerts sent.

When you're done, click the 'Create Alert' button. Google will send you a confirmation email. Clicking the link in this email will activate your Alert.

Manage Your Alerts

You can create and confirm your Alert in one visit on your "Manage Yours Alerts" page. To access this" page, you'll need a Google Account.

To create your account, click the link at the bottom of the Google Alerts home page or visit the Google Accounts home page directly.

Because I want to get news when it breaks I have chosen to have Google send me each personalized alert when "it happens." The downside to this is that I often get overwhelmed with too many emails and don't review any of them.

For this reason, I am considering re-doing some of my alerts to a "once a day" delivery.

This means I will have to delete my current alert and re-enter it. Fortunately, this only takes a matter of seconds to complete.

If you're still not convinced, check out a new guide book, published this month, called Choosing and Using a News Alert Service: The First Complete Round Up of News Alert Services by Information Today Advisor editor Robert Berkman, with contributions by Marie Kotas.

Some of the services evaluated in the guidebook are Google News Alerts, NetContent: IntelliSearch, CBS MarketWatch, CyberAlert, Hoovers, Dialog: NewsEdge, PRNewswire, LexisNexis and Factiva. The cost of the publication: $79.95.

Here's to healthy, adventuresome, soulful, efficient & effective living!

~ Jennifer King